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THE MARDEN 
INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS 



Be Good to Yourself. 

Every Man a King. ' 

Exceptional Employee. 

Getting On. 

He Can Who Thinks He Can. 

How to Get What You Want. 

Joys of Living. 

Keeping Fit. 

Making Life a Masterpiece. 

Miracle of Right Thought. 

Optimistic Life. 

Peace, Power, and Plenty. 

Progressive Business Man. 

Pushing to the Front. 

Rising in the World. 

Secret of Achievement. 

Self-Investment. 

Selling Things. 

Training for Efficiency. 

Victorious Attitude. 

Woman and the Home. 

Young Man Entering Business. 

SUCCESS BOOKLETS 
An Iron Will. Cheerfulness. Good Manners. 
Character. Economy. Opportunity. 

Power of Personality. 

SPECIAL BOOKLETS 
Hints for Young Writers. I Had a Friend. 

Success Nuggets. 




^^^^^^-^^r^^i^^^w 



LOVE'S WAY 



BY 

ORISON SWETT MARDEN 

Author of "Peace, Power and Plenty," "Every 
Man a King," etc. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



*»* 



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Copyright, 1918, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 



OCT 15 1918 

©UI.A503829 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. An Invitation ... A 1 

II. Try Love's Way a 15 

III. The Greatest Thing in the World . 23 

IV. Making Life a Song >< 33 

V. The Dream of Brotherhood . . .; 44 

VI. Driving Away What We Long for Most 55 

VII. Employers and Employees . 66 

VIII. Spite Fences 87 

IX. Work and Happiness 106 

X. Practising Love's Way 117 

XI. Training the Child 124 

XII. How to Lighten Your Burdens . • 141 

XIII. Survival Value 150 

XIV. The Miracle Worker 162 

XV. Our Little Brothers and Sisters . . 176 

XVI. The Thing that Makes a Home . . 192 
XVII. "Stranger, Why Should I not Speak 

to You?" 208 

XVIII. "I Serve the Strongest" .... 219 

XIX. The Daily Orientation 232 

XX. Scatter Your Flowers as You Go . . 250 

XXI. Love Letters from God 262 

XXII. The Harmony Bath 271 

XXIII. Heroism at Home 281 

XXIV. What the Bee Teaches Us ... . 290 
XXV. Love's Way and Christmas Giving . . 302 



LOVE'S WAY 



AN INVITATION 

If your life were wasting away from a pain- 
ful disease which physicians pronounced "in- 
curable," and a master physician should ap- 
pear who declared there was no such thing as 
an "incurable" disease, and that he would heal 
you and all sufferers who would go to him, 
would you not go to him? 

Did you ever realize that you have a per- 
sonal invitation from One who can lift you 
out of all your sufferings, physical and mental ; 
who can solve all your problems and difficul- 
ties? 

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Is not 
that a personal invitation from the divine phy- 
sician, Love? And if you accept it, with all 
that it means, you will realize that peace which 
"passeth all understanding." Your cares and 

1 



* 



Love's Way 



difficulties will melt and dissolve as snow melts 
and dissolves under the sun's rays. 

Are you suffering from a painful disease, 
from dire poverty, from crushing disappoint- 
ments, from injustice or persecution, from dis- 
grace, merited or unmerited — from any of the 
thousand and one things that fill the world 
with misery and unhappiness — then listen to 
Love's call, accept the divine invitation: "Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest." 

Modern thought is putting a new meaning 
into the invitation. It is extending the ap- 
plication of Christ's words to every human 
problem. He put no limitations to his invi- 
tation, which is the voice of Divine Love, call- 
ing to us. It says: 

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will relieve you from the 
drudgery of your labor, because I will put a 
new spirit in you. I will replace your sense 
of drudgery with joy in your task, with love 
of service; I will turn you about so that you 
will face the light and your shadows will no 
longer haunt you because they will fall behind 
you. 



An Invitation 3 

"Come unto me and I will give you rest 
from that incubus of fear that has made you 
a slave in the past; I will relieve you from 
anxiety and worry which have cut down your 
efficiency and made a pygmy out of a possible 
giant. I will take away the fear of death, 
the fear of sickness, the fear of inherited dis- 
ease, all the fears that hold you down and 
break your spirit. 

"Come unto me all ye who are unhappy and 
I will make you glad. No matter what dark- 
ens your horizon or troubles your life, come 
to me, and I will give you rest. I will satisfy 
your yearnings, the longings of your heart; I 
will show you your divinity. 

"Come unto me all ye who are disappointed 
in life, whose ambitions have been thwarted 
and I will show you how to overcome your 
disappointment. I will show you how to use 
your divine power so that you may still make 
good. 

"Come unto me, ye who are held back by 
ill health, by bodily weakness, by physical 
handicaps from doing what you longed to do, 
and I will show you how to be well, how to 
be strong. I will show you that being God's 



Love's Way 



child, and therefore one with your Father you 
cannot be sick, you cannot be weak or miser- 
able except through wrong thinking. The 
truth of your being, the reality of you, being 
divine, cannot suffer pain, or defeat. 

"Come unto me all ye who have botched 
your lives and I will show you how you may 
still triumph. I will show you that the reality 
of you is always triumphant, masterful. I 
will show you that one who holds the right 
mental attitude, who realizes his divine power 
can rise above all his mistakes and failures. 

"Come unto me all ye that have been dis- 
couraged, defeated in life, and I will give you 
the truth that makes free from all limitation, 
free from the limitations of poverty, of failure, 
the limitations of the flesh, for I will show 
you the mind triumphant, the victorious atti- 
tude. 

"Come unto me all ye whose aspirations 
have been blighted, whose ideals have been 
blurred, whose visions have faded out, and I 
will revive them, bring them back to the bright- 
ness and promise of your palmier days. 

"Come unto me all ye that are dejected, 
despondent, wandering in the darkness, and I 



An Invitation 



will put a new spirit in you, a new lamp in 
your path. I will flood your souls with glory, 
with the light that never was on land or sea. 

"Come unto me all ye who feel friendless 
and alone and I will fill your lives with a new 
interest, with new friendships, which will never 
fail, never grow wearisome. 

"Come unto me all ye who are diffident, 
self-conscious, bashful, timid, or self-depre- 
ciatory, who do not believe in yourselves, and 
I will show you how to rid yourself of all of 
these weaknesses. I will show you how to 
eliminate all defects which strangle self-ex- 
pression, rob you of power and happiness, and 
hinder you in your effort to do your best and 
to appear at your best. 

"Come unto me all ye that worry and fear 
and I will give you a prescription which will 
heal you. I, Divine Love, will show you that 
it is ignorance of your locked-up powers in 
the great within of you that makes you a 
worrier, a coward, or a weakling; that all who 
trust me, who come to me, have nothing to 
fear, nothing to worry about. 

"Come unto me all ye that bicker and fight, 
all ye that backbite and hate, all ye that are 



Love's Way 



torn with jealousy, hatred, envy, and I will 
show ye that you are brothers and cannot fight 
when you know the truth of your kinship, or 
envy or hate or injure one another without 
fighting, hating, envying or injuring your- 
selves. 

"Come unto me all ye that are greedy, 
grasping, selfish, and I will show you a better 
way, something that pays better than greed, 
something infinitely more satisfying than self- 
ishness. I will make you so ashamed of your 
selfishness that you will hate it, that it will 
pain you to live in luxury while your brothers 
and sisters are hungry and cold. 

"Come unto me all ye who are victims of 
indecision, who doubt and hesitate, who weigh 
and balance and reconsider things all the time, 
and I will show you how to strengthen your 
will, how to conquer vacillation. 

"Come unto me all ye who have yielded to 
temptation, who have made grievous mistakes, 
and been punished by society for your wrong- 
doing, and I will wash your souls whiter than 
snow. I will show you that no matter what 
you may have done in the past you can re- 
trieve your mistakes, and still make good; I 



An Invitation 



will show you that the image of your Maker 
is still intact, that it has never been marred, 
scarred or stained, that the reality of you to- 
day is perfect, pure and true as it ever was. 

"Come unto me all ye who are the slaves of 
habits which have blasted your hopes, blighted 
your happiness, thwarted your ambition, and 
cast their black shadows across your life, and 
I will show you how to break away from the 
things which are ruining you. I will show you 
how to free yourself from all evil habits — in- 
temperance, impurity, lying, dishonesty, gam- 
bling, the drug habit, whatever it is that is 
thwarting God's purpose in you. 

"Come unto me all ye who are down and 
out, homeless, moneyless, friendless, outcasts 
from society, and I will show you that you are 
right now living in a paradise of a world, that 
perpetual miracles are being performed all 
about you, more wonderful than the raising of 
the dead, that you have wealth in yourself, 
untold wealth. I will show you that you still 
have that which will make you rich beyond 
your wildest dreams, will show you that your 
real wealth can never be lost because this is 
God- wealth, divine riches." 



8 Love's Way 



Love is the great leveling up force of the 
world. Nothing else has ever made such a 
tremendous appeal to those who have botched 
their lives and thrown away their chances, 
those whose lives have been blasted by igno- 
rance, by sin or other unfortunate conditions. 
Love does not condemn, does not criticize, 
does not judge, does not punish, does not 
ostracize, does not exclude. This is not love's 
way. To the worst criminal, to the most de- 
graded sinner, it simply says "Go and sin no 
more." This is its only condemnation. 

Love's way is Christ's way. It says, "Love 
your enemies, bless those that curse you;" "Let 
him that is without sin cast the first stone"; 
and on this condition no one can cast a stone 
because there is no one without sin, no one 
without some weakness as unfortunate as his 
neighbor's. 

Love is the only force in the universe that 
can say: 

"I am that marvelous force which has made 
civilization possible. I have led the human 
race un from the ape stage to its present de- 
velopment, and I will lead it to heights yet 
undreamed of. 



An Invitation 9 

"I am that power which causes human be- 
ings of the most diverse temperaments to live 
together in peace and harmony; which makes 
home so beautiful, a heaven on earth. 

"I am that force which enables a man to find 
his real self, which transforms a brutal, igno- 
rant man into a tender-hearted, sympathetic, 
loving husband and father. 

"I am that spirit which is getting into great 
business establishments and making them 
cleaner, lighter, more wholesome, more liv- 
able places; that spirit which is making em- 
ployees happier, more efficient, more con- 
tented. 

"I am that leaven which is changing the 
spirit of mankind, bringing men nearer and 
nearer to the Christ spirit, the Golden Rule 
ideal. I am making brothers of former ene- 
mies, and bringing the realization of the great 
dream of brotherhood of man ever nearer. 

"I am that power which is making comfort- 
able and happy deformed and crippled chil- 
dren; little ones who in former ages would be 
thrown to wild beasts, or left to the mercy of 
fate, to die of neglect and starvation. I am 
that power which establishes orphan asylums, 



10 Love's Way 



insane asylums, and all sorts of homes, for the 
aged, for the dependent, and for helpless dumb 
animals. 

"My mission on earth is to help, to heal, to 
uplift, to bring cheer and comfort, happiness 
to every one of God's children. I am the 
good Samaritan who heals -the wounds which 
the selfish, the hard-hearted pass by with indif- 
ference. I am the spirit behind the Red Cross, 
the Salvation Army, and all other organiza- 
tions of mercy. I am the power back of all 
movements which are for the betterment of the 
world, the uplif tment of man. 

"I am the great fundamental law of prog- 
ress, the truth that shall make you free. I 
am the essence of all true religion, of all that 
is valuable in all creeds. I am the Christ 
spirit, the Golden Rule ; I am that force which 
is tying human beings together in one grand 
cooperative, solidarity. 

"I am the spirit of courage, that which keeps 
men from playing the coward when sorely 
tempted to do so, which bids them go on when 
they would turn back. I appeal especially 
to the down and outs, to those who are dis- 
couraged, those who think they are nobodies. 



An Invitation 11 

I am a friend to the downtrodden, to the neg- 
lected, the despairing. I bring them new 
hope, new courage, new life. 

"I am that force which has liberated the 
slaves of all the nations; of the earth, which 
has given freedom of conscience and freedom 
of thought to all men. I am that which is 
humanizing the hard-hearted, slave-driving 
employer, killing his selfish grasping greed, 
and showing him that all men are brothers. I 
am that which shows you that your neighbor 
is yourself, and that you, therefore, must love 
him as yourself. 

"I am that which takes the sting out of sor- 
row and the bitterness out of disappointment; 
that which heals the broken heart, breathes 
hope to the discouraged, and good cheer to 
the despondent. 

"I am that which blesses where others curse, 
loves where others hate, forgets and forgives 
where others remember and condemn. I am 
that which yields where others strive; that 
which makes people enjoy what others own, 
because I neutralize envy and covetousness. 
Anger, hatred, bitterness, jealousy, envy, dis- 
content, cannot live an instant in my presence, 



12 Love's Way 



because I neutralize everything which is unlike 
myself. 

"I am the great miracle worker in the 
world's history. I am that which lifts ideals; 
which takes the sordidness out of life, which 
urges people to be and to do instead of to 
have and to hold. 

"I am that benign power which transforms 
quarreling, jealous, envious neighbors and 
makes them live together like brothers and 
sisters. I heal family discords, jealousies and 
hatreds. I make quarreling, discordant part- 
ners friends. I neutralize the sting in cruel 
sarcasm and bitter invective. I take the dag- 
ger out of insults and quench the fire of hot 
temper. I cure all resentment, all feeling of 
hate, bitterness and malice. 

"I am that which dwelleth in the secret place 
of the Most High. I am the healing balm for 
the nations. I am the balm in Gilead for all 
human woes. I am that divine understanding 
which makes the mother see in her wayward 
son not the criminal, but the divine man that 
God planned, and that it is still possible for 
him to be. When everybody else condemns 



An Invitation 13 

the outcast, I call halt, and say 'Wait, there 
is a God in that man somewhere.' 

"I am the comforter of the condemned, who 
visits the prisoner in his cell, and lifts him out 
of his despair. I light up the darkness of all 
condemned, assuage grief, give hope to the 
forlorn. I am here especially for those who 
have lost hope. I revive their courage, give 
them heart to make a new start. 

"I am the voice of God, crying to his chil- 
dren — 'Come unto me all ye that are down- 
cast, discouraged, despairing, who think your 
ambitions are thwarted, and that there is no 
more hope for you, come unto me and I will 
renew your lives. I am a reviver of lost 
visions, a renewer of faded dreams, a resur- 
rector of dead ambitions, a savior for all who 
accept my invitation.' 

"I am that sacred messenger which was de- 
tailed at your birth to go with you through 
life as your counsellor, your protector, your 
guide, your friend. If you have wandered 
away from me, lost your way on the life path, 
come back, and I will give you strength to 
make a fresh beginning and to be the man or 



14 Love's Way 



woman God intended you to be. I will never 
fail you. 

"I will show you that the divinity of man 
is beyond the reach of poverty or failure, or 
any possible disgrace or crime; that the God 
image in man is perfect, immortal; that it 
never had beginning and will never have an 
end; nor can any power in heaven or earth 
take it away from a man, contaminate or in- 
jure it, because the God in man is immune 
from any disaster or misfortune that could 
possibly come to him. It is indestructible. 

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and I will give you the rest for 
which your soul yearns." 



II 

TRY LOVERS WAY 

One who has tried love's way in working 
out life's problems says, "I find it a charm. 
It is a preventive against sin, disease, un- 
happiness, and brings with it health and pros- 
perity." 

If those of us who are living in inharmony 
of any sort would only try love's way, even 
for a short time, we never could be induced 
to go back to the old way of living. We could 
never again be satisfied with the old scolding, 
jealous, anxious, faultfinding, slave-driving, 
worrying ways. 

Why not try the experiment? You who 
have been tortured and torn to pieces for years 
with hot tempers, with worry, with fear, with 
hatred and ill will ; you who have already com- 
mitted suicide on many years of your life, why 
not turn your back on all this and try love's 
way? 

You whose home life has been a bitter dis- 
15 



16 Love's Way 



appointment; you husbands and wives who 
have quarreled, who have never known what 
peace and comfort are, give love's way a trial. 
It will not disappoint you. Love will smooth 
out all your wrinkles, it will put a new spirit 
into your home that was never there before, 
it will bring a new light into your eyes, new 
hope and new joy into your heart. 

You whose lives have been lonely and bar- 
ren, who, perhaps, have soured on life; you 
doubters, you skeptics, you pessimists, you 
who have tried the selfish way, the greedy way, 
who have sought only your own happiness, 
you who have tried the fretting way, the 
worrying way, you whose lives are filled with 
fear and jealousy and all sorts of discords, 
why not try love's way? 

All other ways than love's have failed to 
bring happiness. The selfish way always will 
fail, because it is not in harmony with the law 
of God, with eternal principle. Love's way is. 
It harmonizes with all that is real, all that is 
true and beautiful, and it always works. It 
will unravel all your snarls and solve all your 
problems. 

There is a better way for all you, who, so 



Try Love's Way 17 

far, have found life a bitter disappointment. 
There is a better way for all who bear the 
scars and stains of strife, who have been bat- 
tered and buffeted by the old way, in which 
there has been no rest, no harmony, no sweet- 
ness. It is love's way. Try it for every 
trouble, for every hurt and sorrow, for every 
difficult problem that confronts you. 

You mothers who have worn yourselves to 
a frazzle and prematurely aged yourselves in 
trying to bring up your children by scolding, 
nagging, punishing, driving, why not try love's 
way instead? You can love your boys and 
girls into obedience and respect much more 
quickly and with far better results to them 
and to yourself than by driving them; appeal 
to their best and noblest instincts instead of 
their worst, and you will be surprised to see 
how quickly and readily they will respond to 
your appeal. 

There is something in human nature which 
protests against being driven or forced. If 
you have been trying to force your boys and 
girls in the past, give it up and try the new 
way, love's way. See if it does not work won- 
ders in your home. See if it will not make 



18 Love's Way 



your domestic machinery run much more 
smoothly. See if it will not wonderfully re- 
lieve the strain upon yourself. Give love's 
way a trial. 

Forced work, forced obedience, never brings 
the best results. I know a man who is so 
wrought up all the time by trying to regulate 
everybody and everything to his individual 
pattern, to bring everybody to his way of 
thinking, and to do things just as he does 
them, that there is no living in peace with 
him. His children fairly dread his home com- 
ing. No matter what they are doing it is 
wrong. He is sure to blame his wife and the 
servants for something they did or did not do. 
He makes himself and everybody else in the 
home miserable by his narrowness and his 
domineering spirit. 

The same thing is true in his business. 
Nothing suits him. He is always grumbling, 
finding fault, nagging, discouraging his em- 
ployees. He doesn't know that a little bit of 
encouragement and praise when they do well 
would accomplish infinitely more than all his 
scolding, fretting, stewing and faultfinding, 
to which they have become so accustomed that 



Try Love's Way 19 

it has no effect other than to disgust and make 
them uncomfortable. 

The habit of trying to control people, boss- 
ing them, trying to make them do things our 
way, the habit of keeping everlastingly after 
our children, with don'ts and shan'ts, and 
musts, trying to force our life partner, our 
associates, our employees, to do things accord- 
ing to our ideas, the habit of contradicting and 
calling people down, of trying to regulate 
everybody and get all into line, is destructive 
of all mental harmony. It saps your energies, 
injures your disposition, and antagonizes all 
who come in contact with you. 

Love's way is the very opposite of this. It 
is broad and generous, just, magnanimous. It 
respects the rights and feelings of others. 
Love does not try to correct defects, to change 
undesirable qualities or tendencies by continu- 
ally calling attention to them and rinding 
fault. It simply neutralizes them. Love 
drives those defects and bad qualities out of 
the nature just as the sun drives the darkness 
out of a room when the shutters are flung 
open. 

If there is discord in your home, you will 



20 Love's Way 



be delighted to find how quickly love's way- 
will drive out the darkness, and let in the light 
of harmony. It will change the atmosphere 
in your family as if by magic. It will bring 
a new spirit into your home, and soon help- 
ful relations will take the place of antagonistic 
ones. Let sympathy and kindness take the 
place of scolding and nagging, and you will 
work a revolution in your household. Gen- 
erous, wholehearted, unstinted praise, now 
and then, will act like lubricating oil on dry 
squeaky machinery, and its reflex action on 
yourself will be magical. 

Try love's way, you men who have been 
lording it over your families, bullying and 
browbeating your wives and children, using 
slave-driving methods in your home. You 
know that this old brutal way has not brought 
you happiness or satisfaction; you have al- 
ways been disappointed with it, then why not 
try the new philosophy, try love's way? It 
is the great cure-all, it is the Christ remedy 
which is leavening the world. 

Try it, you faultfinding, scolding house- 
wife. Instead of nagging your family, fret- 
ting and stewing from morning till night, 



Try Love's Way 21 

blaming, upbraiding, complaining, try love's 
way. Instead of berating a maid before your 
guests when she accidentally breaks a piece of 
china, put yourself in her place, try to realize 
her embarrassment, and pass over the mishap 
cheerfully. Then, in private, give her a gentle 
word of caution. She will be more careful in 
the future. If your laundress returns a piece 
of smirched linen, or if her work is not quite 
so well done as it was the last time, don't give 
her a brutal scolding. Harsh treatment will 
only make her sullen and unhappy, but you 
will find her very susceptible to kindness and 
gentle words. 

You men and women who have never been 
able to get good help, who are driven to des- 
peration with the wicked breakage and wast- 
age of your employees ; you who have suffered 
torture in your struggle with dishonesty and 
inefficiency, whose faces are furrowed with 
cruel wrinkles and prematurely aged in try- 
ing to fight evil with evil, try love's way. 

Try it, all you who are worn out with the 
discord and the hagglings, the trials and tribu- 
lations you encounter every day in your busi- 
ness. It will create a new spirit in your store, 



22 Love's Way 



your factory, your office. Whatever your 
business, whatever your trials and difficulties, 
love will ease the jolts of life and smooth your 
way miraculously. Try love's way all you who 
have hitherto lived in purgatory because you 
did not know this better way. 

Near Grant's Tomb in New York, on the 
bluffs overlooking the Hudson, is a little mar- 
ble monument over a century old. It was 
erected to a little four-year-old boy who was 
so genial and lovable that everybody who knew 
him loved him, and it bears this simple in- 
scription, "An amiable child." This is the 
whole story of the little life, which must have 
been a beautiful illustration of love's way, for 
love is always amiable. 

Love's way includes everything that* is 
beautiful, everything that is kind and good 
and clean and true, everything that is worth 
having. It carries no regrets, it never leaves 
us sorry. It is pure as the life of a little child. 
There is always an Amen of the soul to all 
its acts. Love's way always leads us aright, 
because it is the God way. 

Try love's way, it holds the great secret of 
happiness. 



Ill 



THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD 

Love is the life of the soul 

It is the harmony of the Universe. 

Changing. 

Dictionaries give half a column to the 
definition of love. In three words, the Bible 
gives us all its limitless meaning: "God is 
love." 

God is infinite, therefore love is infinite, and 
includes in itself all God's attributes. Life 
without love is valueless. 

By the common consent of mankind in all 
the ages, the most beautiful thing on this earth, 
that which every human being has ever craved 
most, is love. It is, as Henry Ward Beecher 
said, "the river of life in this world. Think 
not that ye know it who stand at the little 
tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not 
until you have gone through the rocky gorges, 
and not lost the stream; not until you have 
gone through the meadow, and the stream has 
widened and deepened until fleets could ride 

23 



24 Love's Way 



on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow 
you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and 
poured your treasures into its depths — not 
until then can you know what love is." 

Somewhere I have read the story of a sun- 
beam that had heard there were places on the 
earth so horrible, So dark, dismal and gloomy 
that it was impossible to describe them. The 
sunbeam resolved to find these places, and 
started on its journey with lightning speed. 
It visited the caverns of the earth. It glided 
into sunless homes, into dark alleys, into 
underground cellars; it wandered everywhere 
in its quest to see what the darkness was like, 
but the sunbeam never found the darkness be- 
cause wherever it went it carried its own light 
with it. Every spot it visited, no matter how 
dark and dismal before its entry, was bright- 
ened and cheered by its presence. 

The sun is a beautiful symbol of love. It 
sends its cheering, life-giving ray into the 
wretched hovel, into the prison cell, as impar- 
tially as into the palace; it gives itself as un- 
stintingly, as joyously to the worst criminal, 
to the poorest wretch who crawls the earth in 
rags, as to the monarch on his throne. It is 



The Greatest Thing in the World 25 

no respecter of persons. It shines upon the 
just and the unjust alike. It does not ask 
whose corn, whose potatoes, whose roses, whose 
homes it shall shine upon. It asks no question 
about earth's races, about our principles, our 
politics, our religious beliefs or convictions. It 
shines upon good and bad, upon believer and 
unbeliever, upon all nationalities, all races, the 
white, the black, the brown, the yellow. It 
has no hatred of, no prejudice toward, any 
human being. It simply floods every nook 
and corner of the earth it can get into. The 
most poisonous swamps, the most miasmatic 
bogs, the most filthy holes, the haunts of the 
vilest creatures, — it pours its light and beauty 
and joy unstintedly upon all. 

Like the sun love irradiates and warms into 
life all that it touches. It is to the human 
heart what the sun is to the rose. It brings 
out all the fragrance and beauty, all the color 
and richness, all the possibilities infolded in 
it. Love brings out all that is best in us, be- 
cause it appeals to the no'blest sentiments, the 
loftiest ideals. True love elevates, purifies, 
and strengthens every heart it touches. It 
lifts us above ourselves because it sees only 



26 Love's Way 



the best in us. It looks back of weakness, back 
of criminality, back of our deficient image of 
ourselves, back of our conviction of our weak- 
ness, of our inferiority, and sees the divine that 
is within us, waiting to be called out. It un- 
locks our nature and releases wonderful powers 
which had been buried so deep that we were 
unconscious of them. 

Love sees God in the worst human ruin. 
It gives everybody a chance. No human be- 
ing has ever yet forfeited the chance to try 
again. When nothing else is left, when life is 
full of bitterness and anguish, the thief, the 
murderer, the failure, the outcast, turns to 
love and finds a refuge, for "Love never 
faileth." It is to every human being what 
mother love is to the erring child. No son or 
daughter has ever fallen so low as to get be- 
yond a mother's love. No man or woman can 
ever get beyond the redemptive power of love. 
It is the sovereign remedy for all ills. 

The mother doesn't ask "Which is my best 
child?" and confer her favors upon that one 
above all the others. No, she loves them all. 
If there is any difference, she gives the most 
love to the one who needs it most, — the weak- 



The Greatest Thing in the Wokld 27 

est, the most delicate, the one least favored 
by nature, the cripple, the deformed or de- 
fective. Love's delight is in helping the un- 
fortunate and raising the fallen. When 
troubles come and fairweather friends have 
deserted you; when your business is ruined; 
when you have made fatal mistakes and so- 
ciety Has closed its doors on you; when every- 
body else rejects and denounces you, when 
everything else has failed, then love comes and 
stands by you, pours oil on your wounds, and 
helps you get on your feet again. 

Love judges no one, condemns no one. It 
always pleads for mercy for the man or the 
woman who has gone astray on the life path. 
It says, "don't condemn that poor wretch, 
there is a God in him somewhere" ; and to the 
fallen woman, "Neither do I condemn thee: 
Go and sin no more." It follows the worst 
sinner and the most hardened criminal to the 
grave, and beyond. 

Love has worked the greatest miracles in 
the world's history. We have all seen the 
transformation it has wrought in a coarse, 
ignorant, brutal life, when a youth on the very 
toboggan slide toward destruction has fallen 



28 Love's Way 



in love with some sweet, beautiful girl, who 
returns his love. In a short time his life has 
cleared up ; it has been lifted up by the regen- 
erating power of love. One by one his vicious 
habits have been replaced by their opposites, 
and he has become a new man. 

Where every other reformative agency fails, 
love succeeds, because it touches the higher 
springs of life, as nothing else can. It is in- 
tuitive because it is sympathetic, and has a 
way of reaching down to the heart of things 
impossible to the soul not guided by it. Again 
and again it transforms the most vicious na- 
tures, eliminates the brute, and calls out the 
finest and highest qualities in a man or woman. 
No power can resist the love force; nothing 
can destroy it. Poverty cannot stifle it, neg- 
lect cannot weaken it; disgrace cannot kill 
it. The drunken, brutal sot cannot blot it out 
of the heart of the devoted wife; ingratitude' 
cannot quench its flame in the. mother's heart. 

It is performing miracles in our prisons; 
and on the battlefield it is a ministering angel. 
Its representative, the Red Cross organiza- 
tion, is showing us the meaning of God's love, 
in binding up the wounds of friend and enemy 



The Greatest Thing in the World 29 

alike. Bight or wrong, no matter on which 
side they fight, love recognizes no nationality, 
sees only God's children in all the wounded 
and dying soldiers. 

Love overcometh fear, because it is the anti- 
dote of fear. It is the only power that can 
conquer this, the greatest human curse, which 
has caused man more suffering than any 
other one thing. Love blesses where others 
curse; remembers where others forget; for- 
gives where others condemn; gives where 
others withhold. "Love takes the sting from 
disappointments and sorrow; it breathes music 
into the voice, into the footsteps; it gives 
worth and beauty to the commonest office; it 
surrounds home with an atmosphere of moral 
health; it gives power to effort and wings to 
progress, it is omnipotent." 

Love is the great mind opener, the great 
heart opener and life enricher, the great de- 
veloper. It is what holds society together; it 
it the Christ spirit which is leavening the 
world. The only thing which is universally 
understood, which speaks all languages, all 
dialects, which is an open book to the most 
ignorant, those who do not know their letters, 



30 Love's Way 



who cannot write their own names, is love. 
Even though they do not understand each 
other's native tongue, two people meeting any- 
where on earth understand the language of 
love as spoken by each other. The only thing 
which makes life endurable, which takes the 
drudgery out of work, the suffering out of 
pain, the deprivation out of poverty, is love. 

There is no other experience in our lives 
that ever gives the satisfaction, the joy that 
comes from loving and being loved in return. 
What greater happiness can there be than 
giving happiness to those who appreciate it, 
those who love us and are devoted to us ? The 
human heart was made for love, — and every 
one can draw to himself as much as he sends 
out. Love's happiness lies in making others 
happy. Love was born a twin and cannot be 
happy alone. It must share everything it has 
with others. It is never selfish, never envious, 
never grasping or greedy. In business, love 
always takes account of the man at the other 
end of the bargain. It is always fair, and 
just. It never takes advantage of, or injures 
another. Love is always generous, helpful, 
kind. 



The Greatest Thing in the World 31 

In his incomparable little book, "The Great- 
est Thing in the World," Henry Drummond 
analyzes the love spectrum. "Love is a com- 
pound thing, Paul tells us," he writes. "As 
you have seen a man of science take a beam of 
light and pass it through a crystal prism, as 
you have seen it come out on the other side 
of the prism broken up into its component 
colors, red and blue and yellow and orange, 
and all the colors of the rainbow, so Paul 
passes love through the magnificent prism of 
his inspired intellect and it comes out on the 
other side broken up into its elements. 

"The Spectrum or the analysis of Love. 
Will you observe what its elements are ? Will 
you notice that they have common names; 
that they are things which can be practised by 
every man in every place in life ; and how, by 
a multitude of small things and ordinary vir- 
tues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, 
is made up? Patience; 'Love suffereth long.' 
Kindness; 'And is kind.' Generosity; 'Love 
envieth not.' Humility; 'Love vaunteth not 
itself, is not puffed up.' Courtesy; 'Doth not 
behave itself unseemly.' Unselfishness; 'Seek- 
eth not her own.' Good Temper ; 'Is not easily 



32 Love's Way 



provoked.' Guilelessness ; 'Thinketh no evil.' 
Sincerity; 'Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but re- 
joiceth in the truth.' " 

Drummond said that Paul's thirteenth 
chapter, First Corinthians, is the greatest love 
poem ever written. When he lectured to 
Evangelist Moody's students in Northfield, 
Massachusetts, he asked, "How many of you 
students will join me in reading this chapter 
once a week for the next three months? A 
man did that once and it changed his whole 
life. Will you do it? Will you?" 

There are only thirteen short verses in this 
chapter on which Henry Drummond lays so 
much stress. It can be committed to memory 
in a very short time; and if any one will do 
this and repeat it understandingly every day, 
there is no doubt that it will revolutionize his 
life. 



IV 

MAKING LIFE A SONG 

At a symposium in St. Andrew's Metho- 
dist Church in New York, the pastor asked 
opinions on the best safeguards to temptation 
in the city. Among the written replies to the 
question by many well known people, includ- 
ing Rabindranath Tagore, Andrew Carnegie, 
Oscar L. Strauss, Arthur Brisbane, Lyman 
Abbott, Misha Applebaum, Henrietta Cros- 
man, and others, this of Henrietta Crosman 
was pronounced the best, — "Recognizing God 
as a present and practical help." 

"Henrietta Crosman puts it well," said the 
pastor, "when she says 'recognizing God in all 
our affairs.' ' In other words, when we recog- 
nize God, who is love, in all our affairs, our 
life is stabilized and strengthened ; we are pro- 
tected against evil and magnetized to draw all 
that is good to us. 

If Miss Crosman's suggestion were adopt- 
ed, not only by young people struggling amid 
the temptations of a great city, but by all 

33 



34 Lovf/s Way 



people, young and old, in every condition, in 
city and country alike, what a lot of misery 
would be avoided! How much happier we 
should all be! 

How many of us make our lives miserable 
by continued grumbling about our environ- 
ment, our work, our neighbors, our condition 
generally, because we don't recognize God in 
all our affairs! 

I know a woman who is always running 
down her town and the people in it. She has 
no kinship with them. She feels above them. 
She never has become reconciled to her en- 
vironment; she says it is a shame to be obliged 
to bring up children in such a dead, God-for- 
saken place, where people have no ideals, and, 
of course, she is discontented and unhappy. 

Now, the trouble is not with the town, but 
with the woman. She does not hold the right 
mental attitude toward her neighbors; she is 
not animated by the love spirit. She has lived 
in a number of towns which other inhabitants 
thought were very good, but in which she was 
no happier than she is now. 

The root of this woman's discontent, as it 
is of many others, is petty social ambition. 



Making Life a Song 35 

She is a climber; always trying to break into 
the society of people socially above her, those 
who have a great deal more money than she 
has. And because she cannot keep up with 
them, she makes herself and her family miser- 
able by condemning the whole place and the 
people in her own class. She considers her- 
self above them, and we all know how a woman 
who holds herself superior to everybody in her 
neighborhood will be treated. Her neigh- 
bors, naturally enough, dislike her, and show 
their resentment in all sorts of disagreeable 
ways. 

Many people are always in discord with 
their environment because they do not recog- 
nize God in all their affairs. Instead they waste 
an immense amount of time and energy in 
fretting and useless resisting, which could be 
used in bettering their condition. 

If you are a fretter, a worrier, a pessimist, 
you will succumb to your unfortunate environ- 
ment and be a nonentity in the world. If you 
are cheerful, hopeful, and an optimist in spite 
of hard conditions, your life will not be a 
failure no matter how inhospitable your sur- 
roundings. To recognize the God in your- 



36 Love's Way 



self and your environment is to be already a 
winner. 

No matter in what environment we are com- 
pelled to be, we should try to get into har- 
mony with it sufficiently to enable us to work 
smoothly, without the friction which exhausts 
and tears down. Friction in the human 
system is like sand in a piece of delicate 
machinery, which grinds and wears out the 
bearings much more quickly than the regular 
work which the machine is intended to per- 
form. 

No one can be happy or do good work while 
holding an antagonistic, pessimistic mental at- 
titude. Pessimists are always knockers, and 
knockers are destroyers, not builders. The 
optimist is the builder, the one who holds the 
right spirit, the mental attitude that improves 
conditions and attracts sympathy and helpful- 
ness from others. 

If your work or your environment is dis- 
tasteful, begin at once to change it by fitting 
yourself for a better position or a higher 
sphere. Antagonizing, worrying, faultfind- 
ing will only make things worse, may drive 
you from that which you feel is beneath you, 



Making Life a Song 37 

to a still lower strata of work, a poorer, more 
uncongenial environment. 

To go through life fretting, fuming, knock- 
ing your environment, your neighbors, your 
work, is to drive away the very things you 
want to attract. The way to change condi- 
tions is to make friends with them. The non- 
resistance philosophy helps you to economize 
your life forces, to store reserve energies, in- 
stead of dissipating them. It helps you to do 
the thing you want to do. It is working with 
God instead of against Him. It is recogniz- 
ing Him in your affairs. 

I recently came across the following lines 
somewhere, and they made a strong impression 
on me: 

"I am not fighting my fight, 
I am singing my song." 

They express all the difference between those 
who have soured on life, who are always com- 
plaining of their lot, and look upon their work 
as hateful drudgery, and those who, whatever 
happens, sing their song, look upon life with 
a cheerful eye and find joy in their job. 

The optimist makes life poetry, a song, the 



38 Love's Way 



pessimist, with the same material, makes it dry, 
dreary prose. 

What we get out of life depends upon how 
we look at it. Our mental attitude determines 
whether we shall be happy or miserable, 
whether we make life music or discord. 

Some people have a faculty for touching 
the wrong keys; from the finest instrument 
they extract only discord. They sound the 
note of pessimism everywhere. All their songs 
are in a minor key. Everything is looking 
down. The shadows predominate in all their 
pictures. There is nothing bright, cheerful or 
beautiful about them. Their outlook is always 
gloomy; times are always hard and money 
tight. Everything in them seems to be con- 
tracting; nothing growing or expanding in 
their lives. 

With others it is just the reverse. They 
cast no shadows. They radiate sunshine. 
Every bud they touch opens its petals and 
flings out its fragrance and beauty. They 
never approach you but to cheer; they never 
speak to you but to inspire. They scatter 
flowers wherever they go. They have that 
happy alchemy which turns prose into poetry, 



Making Life a Song 39 

ugliness to beauty, discord to melody. They 
see the best in people and say pleasant and 
helpful things about them. 

One man will put his very soul into the 
most unattractive calling and not only lift it 
to dignity, but by infusing into it the soul of 
an artist, make it radiant with beauty, while 
another will degrade the loftiest and most 
dignified vocation into drudgery, and make the 
grandest profession seem undesirable. 

Some women shed such a radiance of good 
cheer, comfort and beauty through the hum- 
blest homes, homes with bare floors and pic- 
tureless walls, that they are transformed into 
palaces. They radiate a light through the 
poverty of their surroundings that never was 
on sea or land. They radiate the sweetness 
of love, which transforms and beautifies the 
humblest and homeliest surroundings, while 
other women cannot make an attractive home 
with a million dollars. In the midst of their 
expensive tapestry and costly works of art 
there is an inharmoniousness, a lack of that 
brightness and cheerfulness which come from 
an exquisite taste, born of a sense of the fit- 



40 Love's Way 



ness of things, and a heart that beats warm 
with helpfulness and love. 

If the heart is right we can make the most 
trifling thing, the simplest act or duty beauti- 
ful, but if the heart is not right, nothing in 
the life will be true, or fine, or uplifting. 

The one who faces life the right way, who 
is cheerful, hopeful, always expecting the best 
to come to him because he believes in the 
fatherhood of God, from whom all good things 
come, will increase his ability tremendously. 
His mental attitude will call out resources 
which the calamity howler, the pessimist loses, 
because his mental attitude closes his nature 
instead of opening it up. He negatives his 
mind, and hence greatly lessens his productive 
power. If we would only cultivate the opti- 
mistic spirit, the hopeful way of looking at 
things that should be natural to the children 
of an all-powerful Father, we could increase 
our efficiency a hundred per cent., and also 
reduce to a minimum the disagreeable things 
of life. 

Half of our troubles and trials come from 
our gloomy outlook, from anticipating evil 
instead of good. Nine-tenths of the people 



Making Life a Song 41 

we meet look as though they might be coming 
from a funeral instead of being on their way 
to life's great festival of joy and gladness. 

The habit of anticipating evil, of always 
fearing that some unfortunate thing is going 
to happen, destroys one's peace of mind and 
happiness, and hence mars, one's health and 
efficiency. It is a proof that we do not recog- 
nize God in our affairs, but rather some evil 
force more powerful than God. 

Have you ever noticed how many times a 
day you use the expression, "I'm afraid?" A 
great many of us use it habitually without 
realizing the injurious mental effect the words 
have. I tried to keep count one day of the 
number of times the expression was used by a 
somewhat pessimistic friend of mine. I was 
not with him all the day, but here are some 
of the instances which I recorded. In the 
morning when I met him he said, "Do you 
know, I'm afraid that we are going to have a 
very cold winter, and I'm afraid that it's going 
to have a very bad effect upon my business?" 
A little later he remarked "I'm afraid we're 
going to have serious trouble with Mexico." 
Switching on to family affairs he said, "I'm 



42 Love's Way 



afraid my boy, who is away at school, is going 
to the bad. I'm afraid we're going to have 
trouble with all the children." 

I lunched with him the same day, and the 
first thing he said when we sat down was "I'm 
afraid to eat these things. I've got dyspepsia. 
In fact, I have gotten so I'm afraid to eat al- 
most anything," and so he went on fearing 
something all through the meal. He must 
have said "I'm afraid" at least twenty-five 
times in my hearing that day. 

There is scarcely a human being who doesn't 
use this or some other pessimistic expression 
two or three, perhaps many more, times a day. 
Few of us realize that every time we say "I'm 
afraid" we are confessing a lack of faith in 
ourselves, and thereby weakening our faith 
in our ability to stand up against the thing 
we fear. Every time we say we are afraid of 
poverty, afraid of disease, afraid of conditions, 
afraid of this or afraid of that, we are under- 
mining our confidence in ourselves, under- 
mining our disease-resisting power. We are 
introducing a poison into our minds that will 
react on our health and efficiency. 

Let us quit doing the things which we know 



Making Life a Song 43 

injure us. Let us have done with fear, with 
pessimism, with the pessimist who seems to 
think that the pathway of human life always 
leads to the jungle! Let us look at life from 
the viewpoint of the optimist, who believes that 
it leads to the Paradise of the Promised Land. 
Let us recognize God in all our affairs, and 
say, 

"I am not fighting my fight, 
I am singing my song." 



V 

THE DREAM OF BROTHERHOOD 

In ancient Rome the matrons used to take 
their sewing to the Colosseum, and sit there 
and gossip while the Christian martyrs were 
thrown into the arena to battle for their lives 
with wild beasts, kept without food for many 
days to increase their ferocity. 

Children were also taken to witness those 
awful spectacles, and would clap their hands 
delightedly while their mothers looked on with 
equal enjoyment at the writhing agonies of 
the Christians, as they were torn to pieces by 
the wild beasts. 

Nero used to have the lake in front of his 
golden palace lighted up with torches made 
of Christians covered with tar. It was a 
common practice to expose in desert places 
crippled or sickly infants to die of starvation 
or to be devoured by wild animals. The old, 
who had become useless for active service, were 
treated in the same way. 

44 



The Dream of Brotherhood 45 

With all the might of the great Roman em- 
pire pitted against them, the Christians per- 
sisted in acclaiming their gospel of love, in 
carrying on the work of the Christ. And he- 
hold, in spite of persecution, in spite of tor- 
ture and death, slowly, but surely, the leaven 
of the Christ teaching worked until that same 
old pagan Rome became later the center of 
Christianity. It is full to-day of its most pre- 
cious monuments. 

But what of the persecutions in the name 
of Christianity? What of the horrors of the 
world war? Of the unutterable barbarities 
and atrocities that are being perpetrated by 
so-called Christians? The answer is that, side 
by side with all the evils of war, the leaven 
of love is still working. 

One who has been on the European battle- 
fields says, "You will see hell wide open on the 
battlefield, but you will see heaven likewise. 
Such heroism, such patience, self-devotion, 
cheerfulness under affliction, readiness to fling 
life away to save a comrade, surely these mean 
more, are worth more, than the immediate ob- 
jects of their exercise." Another says, "True 
Christianity is being exhibited on the battle- 



Love's Way 



field in a most marvelous way. Love is work- 
ing there." 

Although we are in the midst of the most 
frightful war in history, yet there are multi- 
tudes of signs of the reign of love. We see the 
most selfless love animating the great army 
of Red Cross surgeons and nurses, who, re- 
gardless of creed or country, racial or social 
differences, are treating all the wounded sol- 
diers on the world's battlefields as brothers, 
binding up their wounds and nursing them 
back to health and life. 

Many a time has it happened that soldiers 
of different nations who were bitter enemies 
in battle and tried in every way to kill each 
other, have found while convalescing side by 
side under the care of Red Cross nurses that 
they were really one in sympathy and feeling, 
brothers at heart and did not know it. Re- 
moved from the atmosphere of hate and dis- 
cord these men have become fast friends and 
learned to feel their brotherhood. 

Pessimists see in the war only the overturn- 
ing of civilization and the letting loose of all 
the demons of hate. But love is stronger than 
hate and will bring life out of death. Even 



The Dkeam of Bkotherhood 47 

on the battlefields it is sowing the seeds of a 
great new life that will transcend anything the 
world has seen before. 

Never before in history has the motto of 
the French Revolution, "Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity" come into more universal use 
than since the war began. The great calamity 
has leveled all class and party distinctions. 
The sharp social, political and religious lines 
which were drawn so tightly in the warring 
countries before the war cloud burst have in 
many instances disappeared. The people have 
been drawn together by the needs of a com- 
mon cause. Men and women of all classes, 
ambitions and creeds, work together for the 
one great end. In France, women of the old 
noblesse have taken into their homes the desti- 
tute wives and children of private soldiers, 
and are treating them as brothers and sisters. 
Highbred ladies have gone into the shops as 
clerks, as waiters in hotels and restaurants, 
and as drivers of busses and automobiles. 
Women who had not known work before have 
cheerfully taken up the tasks dropped by their 
men when they answered their country's call 
to arms. The same is true in England, in 



48 Love's Way 



America, and all the other countries involved 
in the war. 

The barriers leveled by love, by the great 
spirit of human brotherhood, will never be re- 
established. When peace comes the warring 
nations will be re-born on new lines. 

Seven years ago on July 21, 1911, the fif- 
tieth anniversary of the battle of Bull Hun, 
there was enacted in our own country a memo- 
rable scene. On that day the remnants of the 
armies of the blue and the gray met and buried 
forever the last shred of sectional feeling that 
shadowed the relations of the North and the 
South. "The veterans formed in battle ar- 
ray," says a writer, "and marched up Henry 
Hill toward one another, repeating the move- 
ment of the battle fifty years ago. When the 
two long lines met they halted and clasped 
hands. A mighty cheer went up, and many 
of the grizzled old soldiers wept." 

It may take some time to heal the hurts and 
to blot out the memory of the cruel wrongs 
committed in this great war, but the day is 
coming when all the nations of the earth will 
clasp hands in brotherhood and work together 
for the universal good. Love will take the 



The Dream of Brotherhood 49 

place of hatred, and love's way will banish 
wars and human strife, revenge, selfishness and 
greed from the world. Nations have tried the 
hatred way, the way of war, the butchering 
way all up through the centuries, and they 
have never worked. Force has always been a 
failure. There is no place in twentieth cen- 
tury civilization for the rulers or the people 
who seek advancement and world dominion by 
the sword. In our age the way of peace is the 
way of progress. 

Julia Ward Howe, who with her husband 
Dr. Samuel Howe, and for many years after 
his death, had worked unceasingly in the cause 
of humanity, had a remarkable vision of a new 
era for mankind. Telling of the vision some 
time before she passed to the beyond, she said : 

"One night recently I experienced a sud- 
den awakening. I had a vision of a new era 
which is to dawn for mankind and in which 
men and women are battling equally, unitedly, 
for the uplifting and emancipation of the race 
from evil. 

"I saw men and women of every clime work- 
ing like bees to unwrap the evils of society 
and to discover the whole web of vice and 



50 Love's Way 



misery, and to apply the remedies and also to 
find the influences that should best counteract 
evil and its attending suffering. 

"There seemed to be a new, a wondrous, 
ever-permeating light, the glory of which I 
cannot attempt to put in human words — the 
light of new-born hope and sympathy blazing. 
The source of this light was human endeavor 
— immortal purpose of countless thousands of 
men and women, who were equally doing their 
part in the world. 

"I saw the men and the women, standing 
side by side, shoulder to shoulder, in a com- 
mon and indomitable purpose lighting every 
face with a glory not of this earth. All were 
advancing with one end in view, one foe to 
trample, one everlasting good to gain. 

"And then I saw the victory. All of evil 
was gone from the earth. Misery was blotted 
out. Mankind was emancipated and ready to 
march forward in a new era of human un- 
derstanding, all-encompassing sympathy and 
ever-present help. The era of perfect love, 
of peace, passing all understanding." 

This is the dream of the ages, the hope of 
man from the beginning; and every century, 



The Dream of Brotherhood 51 

every year, brings us nearer to its realization. 
In spite of contradictions and many glaring 
evils in our midst, many setbacks and discour- 
agements, the spirit of the Christ, of human 
brotherhood, is slowly gaining ground and 
leavening the human mass. The altruistic 
spirit has made greater headway during the 
last twenty-five years than in the previous 
two centuries. This is evident in all the rami- 
fications of life. We see it in the greater 
sympathy and interest which men and women 
everywhere are taking in their less fortunate 
brothers and sisters. In every part of the 
civilized world the sick, the poor, the old, the 
bruised and suffering, the fallen, the criminal, 
are receiving more humane treatment, more 
kindness than ever before in human history. 

Think of the improvement in the treatment 
of the insane alone. It is not so very long ago 
since those unfortunates were treated in the 
most inhuman manner, chained, flogged and 
abused in all sorts of ways, as though they had 
no claim whatever on our love and sympathy. 

The change in our prison system, too, is 
most significant. In olden times criminals 
[were punished in the most barbarous way — 



52 Love's Way 



their ears cut off, their eyes burned out with 
hot pokers, their bodies mutilated with the 
rack and the thumbscrews, their limbs actu- 
ally pulled apart, and they were often put to 
death by slow torture, perhaps lasting for 
days. 

To-day, in many of our prisons, the kindly, 
considerate treatment that is being substituted 
for the old cruel system of "an eye for an eye, 
a tooth for a tooth" is really helping to reform 
criminals, to make them useful citizens again. 
The old system killed men, broke their spirit, 
or made them more hardened in crime. It 
rarely, if ever, reformed. The new system is 
giving them a chance to make good again. 

Love is showing us how to treat crime as 
Christ treated sin, as a disease to be cured by 
the love balm instead of brutal treatment. 
Love will ultimately banish not only the old 
cruel prison-methods, but the criminal him- 
self. For when the world is run on the 
Golden Rule plan, the temptation to crime will 
be largely eliminated and crime will die a 
natural death. 

The injustice and inequalities that persist 
among us, fostered by individual greed for 



The Dream of Brotherhood 53 

wealth and power, are responsible for much 
of the crime and misery of society. When jus- 
tice rules and every man has an equal oppor- 
tunity with his brother man, schools and social 
centers will supplant prisons and poorhouses. 

The hope of the future of mankind is in the 
universal practice of the Golden Rule. The 
one brief season in the year when an attempt 
is most generally made to put it in practice 
gives us some idea of what a world run on the 
Golden Rule plan would be. 

Along about Christmas time we notice that, 
with few exceptions, the stingiest, meanest 
characters, the most selfish and close-fisted, 
moved by the atmosphere of "good will to 
men" tend to feel generous impulses. Though 
they may use all their ingenuity and cunning 
to get the advantage of one another and make 
the best bargain for themselves; though they 
may be cold-blooded, selfish, and indifferent 
to the sufferings and hardships of others the 
rest of the year, for one day they become 
helpful, kindly, magnanimous. Their pocket- 
books, which they guarded so jealously yester- 
day, they open in the service of their fellow- 
men for this day. On Christmas Day the 



54 Love's Way 



hearts that were dead live again. The world 
comes nearer to happiness than in all the other 
three hundred and sixty-four days. 

Why? Because we realize the dream of 
brotherhood. 

What a tremendous forward stride we 
should take if the Christmas spirit of brother- 
hood could be perpetuated throughout the 
year ! If each one of us should elect to do unto 
others as he would have others do unto him, 
the dream would be quickly realized. 



VI 

DRIVING AWAY WHAT WE LONG FOR MOST 

In an address over the grave of a little child, 
Robert G. Ingersoll said: "I had rather live 
and love where death is king than have eternal 
life where love is not. Another life is naught, 
unless we know and love the ones who love 
us here." 

The most beautiful thing on this earth, that 
which every human being craves most is love. 
The mere suggestion of life without it is un- 
thinkable, for life is love. Where love is not 
there is no life. There is only its semblance. 

The saddest situation in life, one in which 
most of us would be tempted to play the 
coward, is the feeling that nobody cares what 
becomes of us, whether we win or lose in the 
great life game. 

As long as there is some one who cares, the 
motive is not all gone. No matter how des- 
perate or hopeless our outlook, the feeling that 
somebody cares, that some one would miss us, 

55 



56 Love's Way 



that there is somebody who believes in us — 
a wife, a mother, a child, a friend, even a dumb 
animal — enables us to struggle on. But to 
feel that we are absolutely alone, friendless, 
that nobody cares whether we go up or down 
in the world, win or lose, whether we live or 
die, is tragic. Under such conditions, it re- 
quires stern stuff to try still to do one's best. 

If it be that there is any human being so 
forlorn, he must have shut love out of his 
heart. He must have given up trying to love 
or to be loved. He must have stifled the love 
instinct implanted by the Creator in every 
living creature. Something has twisted his 
nature. He is not normal; for God made us 
for love — to love and be loved. 

Some time ago I had a letter from a man 
who said he had soured on love, that he never 
wanted to hear the word again, or to see it in 
print. In his reading he avoided the subject 
of love. If he came across anything about it 
he would skip it. He vowed he would never 
have anything more to do with love. He was 
done with it forever. 

He did not say what had caused this revul- 
sion against love. Perhaps he had been jilted 



What We Long for Most 57 

by some coquette. Perhaps he had been de- 
ceived or betrayed by one he had trusted as 
his friend. But whatever the cause, I could 
not help feeling sorry for the man. He was 
trying to crush out of his heart the thing that 
lifts man nearest to God, that makes him 
divine — the one thing that makes life worth 
living. 

A great many people are disappointed be- 
cause they have so little love in their lives. I 
have heard one woman say that she does not 
believe there is any such thing as real unselfish 
love. She has found that what she thought 
was love in some of her so-called friends was 
only self-interest, for when she was unfortu- 
nate and was not able to pay what she owed 
them they turned against her. In other words, 
this woman believes that people love us only in 
proportion to what they think we have for 
them. 

Without knowing it, her own mental atti- 
tude, her cold distrust of others, is driving love 
and sympathy away from her. In a general 
way, we get back as much love as we give. The 
feelings we arouse in others, the sentiments, 
the emotions, the passions we excite, are good 



/ 
58 Love's Way 



indicators of our own disposition, our own 
character. If we arouse suspicion, distrust, 
jealousy, envy, these qualities must exist to 
some extent in ourselves. Like attracts like. 
We call out of others that which corresponds 
to our mental attitude toward them, our 
treatment of them. 

Many people who are famishing for love, 
whose greatest disappointment is that their 
love instinct is not satisfied, make it impos- 
sible for love to burn in their hearts, because 
there is so little there that goes with love. A 
heart full of bitterness, of envy and jealousy, 
of greed, of cold selfishness, an overleaping 
ambition for place, fame, power, is no dwelling 
place f©r love. Love could not dwell in such 
an atmosphere. It would be chilled to death. 

Most of us by our wrong mental attitude 
drive away the very things we long for and 
struggle to attain. Every normal being longs 
for love ? and yet how many are constantly 
driving it from them by their mental attitude 
and their unlovely ways. 

A mother who all her life has been hungry 
for love is alienating her children by the exac- 
tions of an unfortunate temperament. She 



What We Long for Most 50 

makes the home so uncomfortable by her hard, 
critical, faultfinding spirit and her disagree- 
able disposition that her children are never 
happy there. They are always glad to get 
away from it and from their mother. Nothing 
they do pleases her. She is continually finding 
fault with their conduct, their dress, their man- 
ners, their habits. They never get a word of 
praise or commendation from her, no matter 
how hard they strive for it. The result is that 
she is driving what love they have for her out 
of their hearts. 

True love is never exacting, or faultfinding. 
It cannot be unkind or querulous. If you want 
to be loved you must stop barking at the bad 
in others and look for the good. You will 
always find what you look for. 

"In the heart of Africa, among the great 
lakes," says Drummond, "I have come across 
black men and women who remembered the 
only white man they ever saw before — David 
Livingstone; and, as you cross his footsteps in 
that dark continent, men's faces light up as 
they speak of the kind doctor who passed there 
years ago. They could not understand him; 
but they felt the love that beat in his heart." 



60 Love's Way 



Down in Kentucky, on the outskirts of a 
little back town, in a sassafras thicket, is 
a roughly hewn stone, overgrown with wild 
vines. Carved on the stone are these words: 
"Jane Laler. Ded Agus 1849. She wuz alius 
kin' to everybuddie." 

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in 
the great city of London, is another monu- 
ment to one who had been kind to everybody. 
It is a very different sort of monument to the 
rough stone in the Kentucky town, but the 
sentiment that prompted it is the same. Over 
Lord Shaftesbury's body in Westminster Ab- 
bey are carved two words — "Love; Service." 
Not because of his wealth, his rank, his in- 
tellect and great statesman-like gifts, does this 
man hold an assured place in the hearts of his 
countrymen ; no, what endears him to all ranks 
is that unselfish love which prompted him to 
give his life to the service of his fellow-man. 

Love is the golden key with which all hearts 
are opened. It is the magic door through 
which we must pass to the hearts of our fellow 
men as well as to success in work and life. 

Even the best service without love lacks that 
which makes it divine. "We love them first," 



What We Long foe Most 61 

said a member of the Salvation Army in an- 
swer to my question as to what their first step 
was in endeavoring to reclaim the poor out- 
casts whom they rescue from the streets. This 
is the secret of the marvelous growth of the 
Salvation Army. 

Into everything you do you must put this 
mighty, vivifying force, or you will not suc- 
ceed on the highest plane. You may go into 
the slums of a large city, or out into the high- 
ways and byways, through a sense of duty, or 
because you are a church member, and do not 
wish to appear behind others, or for some other 
reason, to relieve the necessities of the poor, 
to instruct the ignorant and lead them to a 
knowledge of better things ; but if you do not 
love the work, do not love the people you are 
trying to help, your efforts will be futile. 

If we want to flood our lives with sunshine 
and love we must be real men and women; 
and to be real men and women there are some 
things besides getting a living which we must 
do. Whatever our vocations we must make a 
business of humanity. There are many lines 
of this great business which we can carry on 
as side lines with our vocations, such as the 



62 Love's Way 



cheering-up line, the encouraging line, the 
lend-a-hand line. 

It will cost us nothing to scatter our flowers 
as we go along, and we shall never go over just 
the same road again. No matter how limited 
our means we can give a smile and a word of 
cheer to those who minister to our comforts, 
who help us in our daily work — the newsboy, 
the car conductor, the waiter, the clerk, the 
porter on the train, those who serve us in our 
home. Kind words, a smile, a bit of encour- 
agement or inspiration may seem but little 
things, of no account to many of us, yet they 
may be worth everything to some lonely or dis- 
couraged soul famishing for sympathy and 
encouragement. 

A few words of loving sympathy from a 
stranger encouraged a young English lad to 
pursue his studies and become a famous 
author. 

"He is the most stupid boy in school. I 
can't drive anything into his head," said his 
teacher to a visitor to the school this lad was 
attending. The visitor made a little talk to the 
scholars and then passed into another room. 
In leaving the school, however, he made an 



What We Long for Most 63 

opportunity to speak to the so-called stupid 
boy. Patting him on the head, he said, "Never 
mind, my boy, you may be a great scholar 
some day. Do not be discouraged, but try 
hard, and keep on trying." 

The boy had been told so often that he was 
a stupid good-for-nothing that he began to 
think it was true. But the words of the great 
man who had spoken so encouragingly to him 
set his ambition aflame and filled him with a 
new hope. They kept ringing in his ears, and 
he said to himself, "I will show my teacher and 
others who have so long regarded me as a 
stupid good-for-nothing that there is some- 
thing in me." The boy became the famous 
Dr. Adam Clark, author of the great Com- 
mentary on the Bible and other important 
works. 

It is the easiest thing in the world to send 
a little sunshine into other lives, to radiate 
good cheer, kindliness wherever we go. Op- 
portunities for this are never lacking, and the 
opportunities let slip to-day will never come 
back again. But the writing a kindly letter, 
the dropping a cheering word, the little kind- 
nesses by the wayside, will come back to us 



64 Love's Way 



in a thousand ways and give enduring satis- 
faction. 

"Human beings," says Ruskin, "owe a debt 
of love to one another, because there is no 
other method of paying the debt of love and 
care which all of us owe to Providence/ ' In 
other words, the habit of passing along the 
good things that come to us, giving out the 
words of good cheer, giving the glad hand, 
the glad heart, saying the helpful word, is a 
service to the God who sent us here as well 
as to our neighbor. And these little offices 
and services which we can perform every day 
without interference with our regular work 
will play a greater part in our happiness and 
satisfaction than the money that we earn or 
anything we receive from others. 

"It is in giving, not in seeking gifts 
We find our quest." 

Says a writer: "If my love halts, my life 
limps. If I hate, I am wounded out of life. 
Only as I love with love universal, excluding 
none, can the Love Universal eternally make 
its beauties in me and through me laugh out 
its holiest joys." 



What We Long for Most 65 

Only through the daily practice of love 
toward all with whom we come in contact can 
we win that which is the essence of God Him- 
self — that beautiful, spontaneous love for 
which all hearts hunger. 



VII 

EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES 

A manager of large manufacturing inter- 
ests, who had a reputation for squeezing an 
enormous amount of work out of the em- 
ployees under him, in explaining to his board 
of directors how he got results said: "I tell 
yer I can squeeze the work out of 'em. I just 
grind it right out of 'em. That's the only way 
to make these factories pay big dividends, just 
to grind results out of employees, and I keep 
'em guessing. I keep right after 'em. They 
never know when I am coming and they all 
fear me. I keep 'em on the very verge of dis- 
charge. They never know when they are go- 
ing to get the yellow envelope." 

This man, who boasted of coining flesh and 
blood into big dividends employed thousands 
of women and children in his factories. Many 
of the women were, of course, very poor, 
mothers with large families, who were obliged 
after long hours in the factory to do the family 
cooking, washing and mending, all the family 

66 



Employers and Employees 67 

work. Some of this work was done in the 
morning before starting the day in the fac- 
tory at six or seven o'clock, the rest when they 
returned late at night. 

I was talking recently with a cold-blooded, 
overbearing, browbeating business man of 
this type who told me that he was going out 
of business because he was so tired and sick 
of incompetent, dishonest help. His em- 
ployees, he said, were always taking advan- 
tage of him — stealing, spoiling merchandise, 
blundering, shirking, clipping their hours. 
They took no interest in his welfare, their only 
concern being in what they found in their pay 
envelope. "I have enough to live on," he con- 
cluded, "and I don't propose to run a business 
for their benefit. I have tried every means 
I know of to get good work out of ignorant, 
selfish help, but it is no use, and now I have 
done with it. My nervous system is worn out 
and I must give up the game." 

"You say you have tried everything you 
could think of in managing your employees, 
but has it ever occurred to you to try love's 
way?" I asked. 

"Love's way!" he said disgustedly. "What 



68 Love's Way 



do you mean by that? Why, if I didn't use 
a club all the time my help would ride right 
over me and ruin me. For years I have had 
to employ detectives and spies to protect my 
interests. What do these people know about 
love ? Why I should have the red flag out here 
in no time if I should attempt any such fool 
business as that." 

A young man who had been successful in 
employing Golden Rule methods in business 
management hearing of the situation saw in it 
a possible opening, and asked this man to give 
him a trial as manager before giving up his 
business altogether. The result was the dis- 
gruntled business man was so pleased with the 
young man's personality that in less than half 
an hour he had engaged him as a manager, 
although he still insisted that it was a very 
doubtful experiment. 

The first thing the new man did on taking 
charge was to call the employees in each de- 
partment together and have a heart-to-heart 
talk with them. He told them that he had 
come there not only as a friend of the pro- 
prietor, but as their friend also, and that he 
would do everything in his power to advance 



Employers and Employees 69 

their interests as well as those of the business. 
The house, he told them, had been losing 
money, and it was up to him and them to 
change all that and put the balance on the 
right side of the ledger. He made them see 
that harmony and cooperation are the basis of 
any real success for a concern and its em- 
ployees. 

From the start he was cheerful, hopeful, 
sympathetic, enthusiastic, encouraging. He 
quickly won the confidence and good-will of 
everybody in the establishment, and had them 
all working as heartily for the success of the 
business as if it were their own. The place 
was like a great beehive, where all were in- 
dustrious, happy, contented, working for the 
hive. So great was the change that customers 
began to talk about the new spirit in the house. 
Business grew and prospered, and in an in- 
credibly short time, the concern was making 
instead of losing money. 

The Golden Rule method had driven out 
hate, selfishness, greed and dissension. The 
interests of all were centered on the general 
welfare, and so all prospered. When the pro- 
prietor returned from abroad, whither he had 



70 'Love's Way 



gone for a few months' rest and recuperation, 
he could scarcely believe in the reality of the 
transformation that "love's way" had effected 
in his old employees and in the entire estab- 
lishment. 

Some men will make good employees out of 
almost any kind of people. They pick up boys 
on the street, they take criminals released from 
prison, as Henry Ford is doing, and develop 
them into splendid men. They have the facul- 
ty of calling out the best in them, appealing 
to their manliness, their sense of fairness, of 
justice, in doing as they would be done by. 

"Do unto others as you would that others 
should do unto you." All the philosophy of 
the ages is concentrated in this single sentence. 
It embodies the essential element in practical 
Christianity. All law lives in it, the principle 
of all reform. Its practice will ultimately 
swallow up all greed, and the time will come 
when every man will see that his own best 
good is in the highest good of everybody about 
him. The time will come when even in the 
business world the Golden Rule will be found 
by all to be the wisest and most businesslike 
policy. 



Employers and Employees 71 

Mr. H. Gordon Selfridge thinks that the 
labor problem would solve itself if employers 
treated their employees as they would like 
to be treated themselves, or as they would like 
to have their children treated. He says that 
the keeping these points in mind constitutes 
seventy-five per cent, of the secret of the suc- 
cess of his great department store in London, 
which, in the third year of his business there, 
made a profit of half a million dollars. Yet 
when he started his enterprise the best busi- 
ness men in London predicted that it would 
be a complete failure. Conservative people 
said: "He'll be broke within a year. It can't 
be done. We don't like this kind of pushing 
business over here." But by projecting the 
progressive spirit of Americanism into his 
business methods in the heart of London, 
where for centuries men had done business as 
their fathers and grandfathers and their re- 
mote ancestors had done, and by humane 
kindly treatment of his employees, he smashed 
old traditions and broke all business records. 

"I have found the English employees ex- 
ceedingly satisfactory to work with," said Mr. 



72 Love's Way 



Self ridge. "They are not clockwatchers and 
they have been loyal." 

There are few employees who would not be 
"satisfactory" and "loyal" if treated accord- 
ing to this great merchant's plan of campaign, 
which he sums up thus: 

"Pay your employees decent living wages, 
and don't make them afraid of you. A smile 
and a pleasant word go a mighty long way. 
Instil into them a feeling of responsibility, 
make them feel that they are a necessary unit, 
a wheel, if only a small one, but a necessary 
wheel in the large system of the store. In 
short, treat them as you would wish to be 
treated yourself, or as you would like to see 
your children treated." 

Henry Ford, John Wanamaker, Charles M. 
Schwab and others of our most prominent and 
successful merchants and manufacturers owe 
their success and their popularity with their 
employees to the same sort of business methods 
which won H. Gordon Self ridge his great 
London success. 

Mr. Schwab told me recently that he is hav- 
ing wonderful results from his profit-sharing 
policy. He says that before any dividends are 



Employers and Employees 73 



paid the first fifteen per cent, of all profits in 
the business are divided among his employees. 
One of his head men, in addition to his salary, 
received last year over a million dollars and 
another received four hundred thousand dol- 
lars on the profit-sharing plan. 

Henry Ford, discussing his novel plan of 
profit sharing in advance, with an interviewer, 
said: "If I can further strengthen the good- 
will of the thousands of men working in our 
factories it stands to reason that they are go- 
ing to do better work for us, does it not?" 

Mr. Ford had been sharing profits with his 
employees in the usual way after the profits 
had been made, but when he announced his 
purpose of paying his men in advance their 
share of the profits the firm figured on making 
each year, the industrial world regarded his 
scheme as quixotic. Mr. Ford, however, in- 
sisted that it was only social justice, though 
he believed it was besides a matter of business 
in obtaining the good-will of his employees. 
"If men will work better," he reasoned, "in the 
mere hope of something better, how will they 
work with that something actually in hand? 
.... We have calculated to a definite cer- 



74 Love's Way 



tainty what business we shall do the coming 
year. We know the capacity of our plant 
and we know what the profits will be. Ten 
millions of dollars of these anticipated profits 
will go to the men who work by the day. They 
are not to get this with an 'if' attached to it. 
They are to get their share every two weeks. 
We can do that because they are going to aid 
us in making the profits: 

"Of course we, the members of the com- 
pany, will derive a benefit from their better 
work, but even if we do not make an increased 
profit in dollars and cents we would have the 
satisfaction of making twenty thousand men 
prosperous and contented, rather than making 
a few slave-drivers in our plant millionaires." 

That is love's way in business. And it pays 
royally, not only in making better men and 
better workers, but also in making profits. 

Andrew Carnegie says that if he were to 
start in the steel business again he would adopt 
the profit-sharing plan with all of his em- 
ployees, thus making them feel that they were 
really partners instead of employees. 

The employer who can make his employees 
feel that they are virtually partners in the 



Employers and Employees 75 

business instead of merely working for a salary- 
is calling out of his employees a quality of 
work which can never be brought out in any 
other way. Really up-to-date, efficient busi- 
ness men know that the slave- driving, bull- 
dozing, domineering methods, the nagging, 
suspicious, faultfinding methods do not bring 
the desired results. All business men are find- 
ing that a one-sided bargain, whether with cus- 
tomer or employee, is a bad bargain. 

Good fellowship between employers and em- 
ployees is the very foundation of successful 
business management, and good fellowship 
cannot exist where there is injustice, bullying 
and constant faultfinding, or a spirit of supe- 
riority on the part of employers, where the 
employees do not have fair treatment and are 
made to feel that they are dependents of the 
employer. 

It is human nature to resent unfairness, to 
resent being patronized, to resent injustice. 
Good fellowship means team work, and per- 
fect team work is impossible where either em- 
ployee or employer is dissatisfied, where there 
is a feeling of resentment or ill will. Good 



76 Love's Way 



fellowship between employer and employed is 
one of the greatest assets in business. 

This good fellowship or good-will spirit is 
one of the most noticeable features of the John 
Wanamaker stores. Mr. Wanamaker's em- 
ployees have been heard to say, "We can work 
better for a week after a pleasant 'Good morn- 
ing' from Mr. Wanamaker." His kindly dis- 
position and cheerful manner, and his desire to 
create a pleasant feeling and diffuse good 
cheer among those who work for him have had 
a great deal to do with this merchant's re- 
markable success. 

Another big employer who has a thousand 
employees in his factory recently said to a 
visitor: "I want you to take a walk through 
the place with me and see if you can find a 
sullen or discontented face. I know everyone 
of my employees by their first name and they 
all know me. If anyone has a grievance, he 
or she can find their way to my office and no 
one can keep them out, and they know that 
they will get justice. I consider myself re- 
sponsible for the moral and physical well-be- 
ing of every girl in the place from the moment 
she enters in the morning until she leaves in 



Employees and Employees 77 

the evening. I not only want my girls to be 
contented while they are working, but I want 
them to go home that way and arrive that way 
in the morning. You don't see any of these 
girls speeding up and looking unusually busy 
when I come round. They know that I am 
not that kind of man. When business is slow 
I tell them to let up and take their time be- 
cause we will have to work very hard in De- 
cember. The result is that without a word 
from me they will turn out three times as 
much work in December as they do in April. 

"My employees give me the kind of work 
that mere wages cannot buy. They are hon- 
est with me because I am honest with them, 
and they are honest with each other. A man 
found twenty-eight dollars on the floor in one 
of the rooms one day. I advertised through 
the factory that money had been found and 
there was only one claimant out of a thousand 
of employees, and he was the boy who lost it. 
Aside from the money-making interest I have 
in my concern, a decent man feels proud to 
know that there is that kind of a spirit among 
those who work for him." 

I know a New York business man who has 



78 Love's Way 



won the love and respect of every employee 
in his large establishment by the use of similar 
methods. He says that if he notices a sad, 
sour, discontented face anywhere in his estab- 
lishment he calls the owner of it into his pri- 
vate office and says: "Look here, you are not 
happy; there is something wrong. Now, be 
frank with me and tell me what the trouble 
is." The disgruntled employee then tells what 
the trouble is. Perhaps some other employee 
is abusing him; perhaps someone over him is 
not treating him right. Whatever the com- 
plaint the employer sends for the other person 
implicated. Then they talk the matter over 
together; it is usually adjusted easily, and the 
employer sends both employees away happy. 
This is the only way to get the best out of 
employees, to make them happy and contented 
in their work, by kindness and sympathy and 
fair and honorable treatment in all respects. 
There is something seriously lacking in an em- 
ployee who will not respond to such treatment, 
and he will pay the price for it as did that 
dishonest builder, "a foolish eye-servant, a 
poor rogue," of whom Edwin Markham tells 
this story. 



Employers and Employees 79 

"He and his little ones were wretched and 
roofless, whereupon a certain good Samaritan 
said, in his heart, 'I will surprise this man with 
the gift of a comfortable home.' So, without 
telling his purpose, he hired the builder at fair 
wages to build a house on a sunny hill, and 
then he went on business to a far country. 

"The builder was left at work with no 
watchman but his own honor. 'Ha!' said he 
to his heart, 'I can cheat this man. I can 
skimp the material and scamp the work.' So 
he went on spinning out the time, putting in 
poor service, poor nails, poor timbers. 

"When the good Samaritan returned, the 
builder said: 'That is a fine house I built you 
on the hill.' 'Good,' was the reply; 'Go, move 
your folks into it at once, for the house is 
yours. Here is the deed.' 

"The man was thunderstruck. He saw that, 
instead of cheating his friend for a year, he 
had been industriously cheating himself. 'If 
I had only known it was my own house I was 
building!' he kept muttering to himself." 

I know a young man who is acting like this 
unfaithful servant, who also doesn't know that 
he is cheating himself. For several years he 



80 Love's Way 



has been clipping his office hours, going to his 
work late in the morning, remaining away for 
half a day or more at a time under all sorts 
of pretexts — illness, or pretended blocks on the 
street-cars, and yet he thinks he has a griev- 
ance because he is not advanced more rapidly. 
He tells me that his salary has not been ad- 
vanced for years, and that he sees no chance 
for promotion. He complains that many of 
his fellow workers with less ability have been 
promoted many times while he has remained 
stationary. 

This "foolish eye-servant" seems to think 
that his employer is blind, and that he has been 
able to pull the wool over his eyes for years 
without arousing even a suspicion of his back- 
slidings. He brags of his ability, but he hasn't 
intelligence enough to see that the same quali- 
ties which have put his employer at the head 
of a large business enable him to read the char- 
acter of his employees, to know those who are 
faithfully and loyally serving his interests, 
and those who are backsliding and serving 
only their own ease and pleasure. In the long 
run this young man and all employees of his 



Employers and Employees 81 

type will find that, like the dishonest builder, 
they are cheating themselves. 

Many young employees, just because they 
do not get quite as much salary as they think 
they should, throw away all of the other, 
larger, grander remuneration possible for them 
to get outside of their pay envelope, for the 
sake of "getting square" with their employer. 
They deliberately adopt a shirking, do-as- 
little-as-possible policy, and instead of getting 
this larger, more important salary, which they 
can pay themselves, they prefer the consequent 
arrested development, and become small, nar- 
row, inefficient, rutty men and women, with 
nothing magnanimous, nothing broad, noble 
or progressive in their nature. Their leader- 
ship faculties, their initiative, their planning 
ability, their ingenuity and resourcefulness, 
inventiveness, and all the qualities which make 
the leader, the complete, well rounded man, 
remain undeveloped. While trying to "get 
square" with their employer, by giving him 
pinched service, they blight their own growth, 
strangle their prospects, and go through life 
half men instead of full men — small, narrow, 



82 Love's Way 



weak men, instead of the strong, grand, com- 
plete men they might be. 

There is another class of employees who by 
their disloyalty, both in and out of the office, 
factory or shop — wherever they are employed 
— in constantly "knocking" their employers, 
hurt themselves as much as the shirkers. I 
know one of those knockers who is always 
sneering at his employer, criticizing his meth- 
ods and making slurring or insulting remarks 
about him. It is positively painful to hear this 
young man's querulous complaints and bitter 
criticisms of his "boss." 

It always pains me to hear employees knock- 
ing the employer and the concern they are 
working for, criticizing their methods, turning 
up their noses at their policy. Apart from the 
lack of good-will, of sympathy in their atti- 
tude, it shows lack of principle and great weak- 
ness of character. If you do not like the peo- 
ple you are working for; if their methods are 
unfair, dishonest; if your conscience does not 
approve them, then you should leave them in- 
stead of finding fault and criticizing. You 
should get another job. Whatever the cause 
may be, the habit of knocking is very injurious 



Employers and Employees 83 

to the "knocker." It keeps the mind embit- 
tered, and tends to kill creative power. No 
one can do his best work while he nurses bit- 
terness in his heart toward anyone. 

There is yet another class of employees who 
are so thin-skinned and sensitive that they can- 
not stand any criticism or correction from em- 
ployers, even though it be for their own good. 
A young man of this type threw up his job 
recently because, as he put it, he "couldn't 
stand the gaff." His manager, he said, was 
always criticizing his work, constantly prod- 
ding him for not doing better, and so he got 
tired of it and quit. 

To be too thin-skinned or sensitive is also 
to be weak, and it will not pay either in busi- 
ness or in social life. If the climbing instinct 
is sufficiently strong in you, if you are deter- 
mined to get on and up in the world, if you 
have backbone, you won't be afraid of a little 
criticism or correction, especially when it is in- 
tended for your improvement. 

There are some employees that the meanest 
employers cannot find fault with, because their 
work is always carefully, conscientiously, and 
painstakingly done. And if your employer is 



84 Love's Way 



always scolding you and criticizing your work, 
you will find, if you examine yourself care- 
fully, that there is a reason for it. If you are 
honest with yourself you will probably find 
that to attribute all of it to his meanness, to his 
unfortunate disposition or bad temper, is sim- 
ply covering up the real reason and deceiving 
yourself. 

But in the final equation the burden of re- 
sponsibility for making a good or a bad em- 
ployee rests largely with the employer, for we 
call out of others the qualities we appeal to. 
Whatever we awaken in another's nature has 
an affinity for the influence which awakened it. 
A magnet run through a pile of rubbish will 
draw out only nails, tacks, screws, or whatever 
has an affinity for it. We draw out of em- 
ployees or others just the qualities which cor- 
respond with our moods, our motives, and our 
manner toward them. Every manager, every 
employer, is a magnet which calls certain 
things out of employees. Some men never 
touch the best in their employees, never arouse 
their best qualities, because the methods they 
use are not calculated to do so. Their char- 
acter is expressed in their methods, and they 



Employers and Employees 85 

appeal to the lowest, instead of the highest, 
in human nature. 

It is astonishing how quickly the qualities 
of the head of a concern will trickle clear down 
to every employee on his force, so that they 
will take on his characteristics. If he has high 
ideals, if he is refined and cultivated, they will 
tend to reflect his ideals, his refinement, his 
culture. If he is low, coarse, animal in his 
tastes, in his instincts, he will draw out all 
that is worst in his employees. 

I tell you, my friend employer, it is give and 
take in this world. Action and reaction are 
equal. We get what we give. I have heard 
employers say: "What's the use in wasting 
your sympathy in trying to help employees; 
they don't appreciate it; they are a lot of cat- 
tle." Now if you hold that sort of attitude 
toward those who are making your success pos- 
sible, you will always have a troublesome labor 
problem. Your employees are your brothers 
and sisters, and until you regard them as such, 
and treat them as such, you are going to be 
in hot water, and they are going to stint their 
services. It is only human nature that they 
will try to get all they can out of you as 



86 Love's Way 



long as you are playing the same game with 
them. 

The intelligent business world, generally, 
and many of our housewives, are beginning to 
find that a pooling of interests, mutual respect, 
sympathy, kindness and consideration between 
employer and employee, in short, the practice 
of love's way, is the one only and infallible 
solution of labor problems and difficulties. 



VIII 

SPITE FENCES 

After an ugly scar had been made by the 
stone quarry in the mountainside opposite 
Ruskin's home, destroying the beauty of his 
favorite landscape, he used to place a big chair 
in front of the window where he had been ac- 
customed to command a beautiful view of lake 
and mountain so that it would conceal the scar 
from him while working, because it disturbed 
the harmony of his thought. 

If you have received an ugly scar from some 
one perhaps whom you trusted and believed 
in; if you have a sore spot, a tender spot any- 
where that mars your happiness, don't aggra- 
vate your pain by looking at it, keeping the 
sore open by reviewing a painful experience 
and cherishing a grudge against the one who 
injured you. Cover your wound with the 
mantle of love instead, forget and forgive the 
injury, and your wound will soon heal. 

87 



88 Love's Way 



This is what a great singer did in the case 
of one who tried to do her a cruel wrong. The 
story is told by T. DeWitt Talmage in "The 
Pathway of Life" : 

"When Madame Sontag began her musical 
career, she was hissed off the stage at Vienna 
by the friends of her rival, Amelia Steininger, 
who had begun to decline through her dissipa- 
tion. Years passed on and one day Madame 
Sontag, in her glory, was riding through Ber- 
lin, when she saw a child leading a blind wo- 
man, and she said: 'Come here, my child. 
Who is that you are leading by the hand?' 
The child replied: 'That's my mother; that's 
Amelia Steininger. She used to be a great 
singer, but she lost her voice, and she cried so 
much about it that she lost her eyesight.' 'Give 
my love to her,' said Madame Sontag, 'and tell 
her an old acquaintance will call on her this 
afternoon.' The next week, in Berlin, Ma- 
dame Sontag sang before a vast audience gath- 
ered at a benefit for that blind woman. She 
took a skilled oculist to see her, but in vain 
he tried to give eyesight to the blind woman. 
Until the day of Amelia Steininger's death, 
Madame Sontag took care of her, and her 



Spite Fences 89 



daughter after her. That was what the queen 
of song did for her enemy." 

That was love's way, the way of the Christ, 
who gave His followers that divine command, 
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, 
do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you, and perse- 
cute you ; that ye may be the children of your 
Father which is in Heaven." 

If you would be truly happy "bless where 
others curse; love where others hate; forget 
where others condemn; yield where others 
strive ; give up where others grasp ; lose where 
others gain." 

Revenge, prejudice, hatred, spite, the desire 
for retaliation, all of the ill-will family act as 
irritants in the blood, and often destroy the 
health as well as the happiness of those who 
indulge in them. 

I know a man who for years carried a fear- 
ful grudge against an employer who had 
broken a contract with him and discharged 
him. He not only refused to speak to his 
former employer when he met him on the 
street, but he stabbed him in the back when- 
ever he got an opportunity, was always saying 



90 Love's Way 



bitter things about him. Finally the employer 
failed in business, and in his desperate need, 
in order to keep his family from want, he ap- 
plied for a position to the man he had once 
discharged, who in the meantime had become 
prosperous. The man gloated over their 
changed conditions and took great delight in 
"getting square," as he called it, with "the old 
man." Instead of giving him a helping hand, 
he gave him what he described as "a terrible 
raking over the coals," told him how he had 
hated him for years for the insult he had put 
upon him, and that he was really glad to have 
the opportunity of witnessing his painful dis- 
tress and of turning him down when asking for 
a favor. He actually rejoiced in the misfor- 
tune of the man he regarded as his enemy and 
bragged about his triumph in at last "getting 
square" with him. 

Now, this getting square business proved a 
very costly one to this man, as it does to every- 
body who tries it. Hatred had rankled so long 
in his system that there is no doubt but it had 
much to do with the failure of his health, for 
he suffered frightfully from chronic nervous 
dyspepsia, and liver and kidney trouble, as 



Spite Fences 91 



well as rheumatism. Indeed, his physician told 
him it was his mental irritation that caused his 
nervous breakdown. He said that the carry- 
ing grudges against neighbors, the failure to 
eradicate the roots of fancied insults, allowing 
hard thoughts and bitter feelings to fester and 
ulcerate in the nature, lowers one's vitality, 
lessens physical resisting power, and tends to 
physical and mental deterioration. 

A determination to be revenged, to "get 
square," for real or fancied wrongs, all 
grudges, all ill-will, all hatred and malice, are 
boomerangs which always come back to the 
thrower, who, in the end, is injured much more 
by them than the one at whom they were 
aimed. 

The story is told of a man who had once 
been very poor, but who after a time had ac- 
cumulated a fortune. He built himself a mag- 
nificent mansion, and because he wanted to get 
square with a poorer neighbor with whom he 
had had a quarrel on his way up, he built a 
"spite fence" so high around his mansion that 
it cut much of the light and the sunshine out 
of the poorer man's house. It cut off the cool 
breezes in the summer, the sun in the winter, 



92 Love's Way 



and made his neighbor's house very uncom- 
fortable. To make the matter worse, there 
was an invalid sister in the neighbor's house 
who was tubercular and needed the sun very 
much. The rich man knew this, but so long 
as he "got square" with the man with whom 
he had quarreled he did not care who suffered. 
He had not spoken to his neighbor for sev- 
eral years, when one day he saw a hearse in 
front of his door. Instantly the truth flashed 
upon his mind — that the invalid sister had 
gone, and then he was tortured with the 
thought that possibly the cutting off of the 
sun and air from that part of the house where 
she had lived had hastened her death. He tried 
in every way to get this idea out of his head, 
saying to himself, "How foolish this is; it is 
none of my affair. The man could have moved 
the invalid to some other part of the town. 
Her death is not my fault. But the thought 
would not down, and he resolved to go to the 
man against whom he had so long cherished 
such a bitter grudge and tell him that he would 
remove the fence, if he so desired. But every 
time he made up his mind to do this, and had 
the opportunity, something inside of him re- 



Spite Fences 93 



sisted, a stubbornness which he could not ac- 
count for, urged him to put off, and put off, 
the execution of his purpose, until finally the 
man disappeared. He was not seen going in 
and out of his home, and upon inquiry the rich 
man learned that his neighbor was very ill and 
not likely to live. This increased his torture, 
his regret, for he was fearful, as in the case of 
the woman, that the spite fence might have 
had something to do with her brother's illness. 

Again he resolved to see the man, to ask 
pardon for his spite, and to remove the fence. 
This time he went as far as his neighbor's 
gate, but still he couldn't get up his courage 
to go into the house. He thought, perhaps, 
the door would be slammed in his face, so 
again he let his good resolution wane, until one 
day he saw crape on the door. Then he knew 
his neighbor was gone, and that never while 
life lasted could he make amends for the wrong 
he had done him. 

After the funeral he began to take the spite 
fence down, but he never ceased to blame him- 
self for the two deaths. All his remaining 
years were clouded with regrets and unavail- 
ing remorse. He moved away from his beau- 



94 Love's Way 



tiful mansion, for he could not bear the sight 
of the desolate, empty house opposite, which 
was a perpetual reproach to him. 

People who nurse a grudge or bitter resent- 
ment, who build spite fences to shut out the 
light, the air and the view from their neigh- 
bors, never get any real satisfaction out of 
such fiendish conduct ; when too late they real- 
ize that they only added fuel to the flame of 
their anger and resentment, and further in- 
creased their unhappiness. 

In good-will to men lies the cure for all the 
evils of society. With good-will to men in our 
hearts there is no possibility of cherishing a 
grudge against a neighbor, of wilfully injur- 
ing another. Hatred, ill-will, cannot live an 
instant in the presence of the Golden Rule, in 
the presence of love. Love melts all preju- 
dices, dissolves all hatreds and jealousies, neu- 
tralizes all bitterness. All doors fly open to 
love. It has no enemies. It is a welcome 
guest everywhere. It needs no introduction. 
It introduces itself, and every created thing 
responds to it. It has transformed wild beasts 
into the dearest and most lovable of pets. It 
drives the brute out of every human being. 



Spite Fences 95 



What a fearful price people pay for their 
revenge — a price which staggers their advance- 
ment, kills their efficiency, ruins their happi- 
ness, their characters. 

I have known people to carry for years feel- 
ings of bitter hatred and a desire for revenge, 
a determination to "get square" with those 
who injured them, until their whole characters 
were so changed that they became almost in- 
human. Hatred, revenge, and jealousy are 
poisons just as fatal to all that is noblest in 
us as arsenic is fatal to the physical life. And 
then think for a moment how unmanly, how 
unwomanly, how despicable it is to be waiting 
for an opportunity to injure another, or to 
"get square" with some one! 

Robert Browning says: "It is good to for- 
give, best to forget." Many people, however, 
say of some one. who has done them an injury, 
"I can forgive, but I can never forget." Now, 
this is not forgiving, for as long as we hold 
the injury done us in mind, we do not forgive 
from our hearts. This is not love's way. It is 
not God's way, for He has said to the wrong- 
doer who repents, "Though thy sins be as scar- 
let they shall be made whiter than snow." 



96 Love's Way 



If for any real or fancied wrong you hold 
a grudge against your neighbor, there is a 
better way of "getting square" than by build- 
ing a spite fence. Love's way is infinitely bet- 
ter. It will win over your neighbor's respect 
and love, and it will have the approval of your 
own soul. You have tried the "getting square" 
policy, the hatred and grudge method; you 
have tried the revenge way, the jealousy way; 
you have tried the worry, the anxiety method, 
and these have pained and tortured you all the 
more. You have tried law and the courts to 
settle troubles and difficulties with neighbors 
and business associates, and perhaps you won 
lawsuits only to make bitter, lifelong enemies. 
But perhaps you have never yet tried love's 
way, excepting in spots. If you have not yet 
tried it as a principle, as a life philosophy, as 
a great life lubricant, begin now. It will 
smooth out all the rough places and wonder- 
fully ease your journey over the jolts of 
life. 

In proportion as you see the God in your 
friends and in your fellow beings generally 
will you call out their divine qualities and your 
own, because you appeal to the Godlike in 



Spite Fences 97 



them and in yourself. This is the secret of 
the brotherhood of man, of harmony and hap- 
piness. 

Those who make love's way a life policy al- 
ways see the best in people, and say pleasant, 
helpful things to them and about them. The 
trouble with most of us is that we do not make 
love's way a life policy; we do not open up 
our natures, throw wide the doors of our 
hearts and sympathies, and thus let in the 
sunshine of good-will, cheer and kindness. 

If we were only as generous in judging 
others as we are in judging ourselves, as tol- 
erant of others' weaknesses as we are of our 
own, we should be very slow to anger. The 
habit of holding the good-will, the kindly, sym- 
pathetic thought toward everybody would lift 
our minds above petty jealousy and mean- 
nesses; it would enrich and enlarge our whole 
nature. The daily habit of wishing everybody 
well, of feeling like wishing everybody a God- 
speed, no matter if they are strangers, enno- 
bles character and beautifies and enriches life. 

Yet everywhere we see people who are quar- 
reling about half of the time, nagging, fault- 
finding, "getting mad" and putting up spite 



98 Love's Way 



fences for trifles unworthy of attention. What 
a way for men and women with divine possibil- 
ities to spend their lives ! 

It is the spirit of hate, of selfishness and 
greed, that has obsessed those who are respon- 
sible for the present awful war. Love has not 
yet been born in the hearts of those who have 
brought this tragedy upon the world. They 
do not know what brotherhood means. The 
Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, are 
strangers to them. When love shall be born 
into their hearts there will be a new order of 
things. 

Look out for the buried roots of former 
troubles, of old grudges, feelings of revenge, 
excuses for trying to get square! Root them 
up, cast them out of your heart and forget 
them, or you will be sorry. Obey the divine 
command, "Love your enemies," and you will 
have peace and happiness instead of discord 
and unhappiness. 

No more scientific command was ever given 
than "Love your enemies," because love is the 
antidote for all sorts of grudges, all feelings 
of ill-will. You will have no enemies if you 
treat them all as friends, if you do by them 



Spite Fences 99 



as you would have them do by you. There is 
only one way to make and to hold enemies, and 
that is, to treat people like enemies in your 
thought and in your attitude and conduct 
toward them. You will attract the same kind 
of thoughts that you give out. Your own will 
come back to you, your attitude toward others 
will be practically their attitude toward you. 
Hatred cannot live an instant in the presence 
of love, any more than fire and water can 
live together. The practice of the Golden 
Rule, obedience to the command, "Love your 
enemies," kills revenge, jealousy, greed, all 
unkindness. It makes friends and brothers of 
enemies. 

This is as natural as it is scientific. We all 
love kindly, magnanimous treatment. It soft- 
ens hearts and wipes out ill feeling. Hatred 
and resentment cannot live in an atmos- 
phere of friendliness, of helpfulness, of broth- 
erly love. Ninety-nine times out of a hun- 
dred a conciliatory attitude would bring your 
own to you without contention, without quar- 
reling. Practicing love's way with those we 
call our enemies would do away with a large 
part of the law business of the world. Very 



100 Love's Way 



few lawyers would have business if love's way 
instead of law's way were always practiced by 
contestants. 

Did you ever realize that by yielding instead 
of resisting, by giving in instead of being stub- 
born, of being a stickler for an apology, you 
disarm the resentment and awaken the better 
nature of the one who has injured you? Many 
people have thus gained the good-will of one 
whom they had regarded as an enemy. 

Give in, my friend — this is love's way. 
Don't resist, don't stand out, don't be a stick- 
ler for the fine points, for the letter of your 
rights, but show yourself big, magnanimous, 
generous to your foe or fancied enemy. You 
will arouse what is big and generous in him. 
He will say to himself, "Why, I never real- 
ized that this man was such a good fellow, 
that he had such splendid qualities." He will 
be so impressed by your yielding, your "giv- 
ing in," when according to custom you had a 
perfect right to resist, that he will become 
your friend. He cannot help admiring such 
magnanimity; he cannot stand off, hold out, 
after that, any more than a man you knock 
against accidentally on the street can hold his 



Spite Fences 101 



resentment when you apologize graciously and 
tell him how sorry you are. 

The way of hatred, of resistance, the policy 
of harboring a grudge and trying to get 
square always leads to sorrow and disaster. 
Not long ago a fifteen-year-old boy shot and 
killed his uncle. When arrested for the crime, 
his defense was that his uncle had insulted his 
mother, and that for fifteen months he had 
been thinking about it, and had determined 
to "get square" with him. 

Think of this wretched boy, who on the very 
threshold of his young life, because of a real 
or fancied injury commits a foul murder, thus 
blasting his whole career, if not forfeiting his 
life, and bringing disgrace on all connected 
with him! 

Taking the law into our own hands, and in 
blind passion taking revenge for what often 
prove to be fancied injuries or insults, is a 
very serious matter. You cannot afford to 
go through the world recklessly venting your 
passion and spite upon those you think have 
injured or insulted you. You can't afford 
to go through life with a shield up in front of 
you, always ready to ward off thrusts from 



102 Love's Way 



others who you think are going to hurt or in- 
sult you. You cannot afford the fatal rank- 
ling of hatred and revenge in your soul. They 
are efficiency killers, happiness destroyers. 
No one can afford to allow the enemies of his 
health, his happiness, and his efficiency, the 
enemies of his eternal welfare, to run riot in 
his nature, to blur his ideals, mar his ambition 
and strangle his chances in life. 

One of the beauties of the New Thought 
and Christian Science philosophy is that it 
helps people to eradicate the roots of old trou- 
bles, to eliminate the causes of unhappiness-and 
misery. It enables them to put out of their 
minds, to wipe out a bitter, unhappy past, be- 
cause it believes thoroughly in the science of 
Christ's command to love our enemies. 

Before Christ's day it was "an eye for an 
eye," an unkindness for an unkindness, a 
thrust for a thrust, a blow for a blow; but He 
taught that we must not strike back. "Ye have 
heard that it hath been said, An eye for an 
eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto 
you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever 
shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
the other also." 



Spite Fences 103 



"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. 
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and pray for them which despitefully use 
you and persecute you." This is as scientific 
as the laws of chemistry or mathematics. 

The infant puts his hand in the flame and 
the pain he suffers teaches him a bitter lesson. 
He knows better than to do it again. After 
we have had our revenge, after we have tor- 
tured ourselves with thoughts which tear and 
lacerate us, after we have had experience 
enough of this kind, we shall learn that it is 
too expensive a business, that we cannot afford 
to pay such a price for the sake of "getting 
square" with another. 

The next time you are so angry that your 
blood boils with indignation and you are 
ready to belch forth the hot lava of your tem- 
per like a volcano, just think a moment and 
don't do it. The next time you are inclined 
to hold a grudge in your heart against some 
one you think has injured you, don't do it. 
You are only putting up a spite fence between 



104 Love's Way 



yourself and your God. There's an infinitely 
better way of "getting even" than of flying 
into a passion or holding a grudge, a glorious 
way that will give you peace of mind and in- 
finite satisfaction — love's way. Try it. 

Don't mail that sarcastic, bitter letter which 
you wrote in an angry mood, and which gave 
you a feeling of spiteful satisfaction because 
you thought you had done a smart thing and 
were going to get square with someone who 
had insulted or injured you — burn it. There 
is a better way, love's way. Try it. 

Don't say the mean thing you have been 
planning to say to someone you think has been 
mean to you. Instead, give him the love 
thought, the magnanimous thought. Say to 
yourself: "He is my brother. No matter what 
he has done, I can't be mean to him. I must 
show my friendliness, my magnanimity to this 
brother." 

In France surgeons are using electric mag- 
nets to draw fragments of shrapnel, bullets, 
steel particles, etc., from soldiers' wounds. The 
love magnet applied to our enemies, to those 
who have injured us, will draw out the irri- 



Spite Fences 105 



tating substances, the things which poison. 
Love is the spiritual magnet that takes the 
sting out of all sorts of injuries and insults; 
it removes all discord because it forgets as 
well as forgives. 



IX 

WORK AND HAPPINESS 

"He who loves work gains all the favor of 
the gods," says Dr. Frank Crane. 

Instead of being a curse, work is man's 
greatest blessing. There is no one thing that 
has ever done so much for humanity, that has 
given so much happiness, saved so many 
human beings from despair, and kept so many 
from suicide; no one thing that has called 
forth so many hidden resources, developed and 
strengthened so many powers of mind and 
body as has work. 

A woman whose husband's health had failed, 
and who had also lost his property, said that 
she had never known what real happiness, real 
satisfaction, was until she had to push out for 
herself, to struggle to make a living for her- 
self and her husband. She said that many of 
the things which previously had loomed so 
large, and annoyed her intensely when she had 
little or nothing to do, disappeared altogether 

106 



Work and Happiness 107 

as the larger responsibilities came to her. In 
the exercise of her talents in her daily work 
she found new life, new courage, new ambi- 
tion. Her health also improved greatly after 
she had been thrown upon her own resources. 

Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, says: "A human being is a creature who 
cannot be healthy or happy or useful unless 
his balance is preserved by motion, by change, 
by action, by progress." In other words, no 
man or woman can be healthy, happy or use- 
ful if not engaged in useful, productive work, 
work that will be of some service to mankind. 

Many people have a sort of vague impres- 
sion that a happy, constructive life is a thing 
apart from the day's work, that it is a mystical 
something, determined largely by fate or 
destiny. The truth is, it depends entirely on 
how we manipulate our personal assets. The 
material of which success and happiness are 
built is in our own hands. The building is 
the work of every day. It consists in living 
life up to its maximum possibility of good. 
There is no unnatural straining and striving 
in this. It is a simple matter of honest, ear- 
nest, persistent endeavor every day ; of always 



108 Love's Way 



trying to better our best and to make our 
highest moment permanent. 

"Get your happiness out of your work or 
you will never know what real happiness is," 
said Elbert Hubbard. The idle life is never a 
happy life. You must feel satisfied with your- 
self before you can be happy, and you are not 
satisfied with yourself unless you are doing the 
best thing possible to you. I never knew an 
idle person to approve of or think much of 
himself. Such people are always restless, dis- 
contented, unhappy, always hunting for new 
sensations, new excitements. 

No one has ever found greater happiness 
than in the normal, vigorous exercise of his 
faculties along the line of his bent. If you 
have the right spirit; if you have the soul of 
an artist, no matter what your vocation, how- 
ever laborious your work, you will find joy 
and satisfaction in it. The only genuine satis- 
faction that can come to a human being is to 
be a real man, or a real woman, and one can 
not be that and live an idle, useless life. 

One of the greatest delusions that ever crept 
into a human brain is the idea that the body of 
man, with its complex activities and functions, 



Work and Happiness 109 

and the mind, with its divine possibilities, its 
immortal outreachings and longings can be 
satisfied with the froth of life, with its glitter- 
ing but unsatisfying pleasures. 

The human machine was made for action, 
was designed to perform useful work, and 
there can be no happiness for an able-bodied 
man or woman outside of an industrious life. 
We cannot cheat nature. If we would be 
happy, we must conform to nature's laws. 
Work, love and play are the great balance 
wheels of man's being. 

"Work cannot be evaded without serious 
spiritual loss," says Hamilton W. Mabie; "for 
work is the most general and the most search- 
ing method of education to which men are sub- 
ject. A process which is educational, in a way 
at once so deep and rich must, in the nature 
of things, form part of the spiritual order of 
life; for education is always spiritual in its 
results. Christ's life among men was one of 
toil ; He was bred to a trade, and practised it ; 
His labors were manifold and continuous ; and 
in word, deed and habit He identified Himself 
with those who work. Many of His most 
beautiful parables grew out of His familiarity 



110 Love's Way 



with the tasks of the shepherd and husband- 
men; many of the deepest truths He gave to 
His disciples were made real and comprehen- 
sible by the imagery of the working life in the 
fields and at home; and when he said, 'My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' He 
not only gave a divine sanction to work, but 
He made it a part of the divine life." 

There is something inside a man that con- 
demns him and utters its everlasting protest 
against his taking out of life's granary all the 
good things which the workers have put into it, 
while he has done nothing himself to produce 
or to earn these things. There is something 
inside of him that tells him he is mean and con- 
temptible, that he is a thief, if he does not 
perform his part of the world's work. 

How would you feel if you were wrecked at 
sea and should climb upon a great raft which 
your fellow passengers had made out of float- 
ing pieces of the wrecked ship, taking the 
most comfortable position, eating heartily of 
the scant food, drinking all the water you 
wanted, even though the workers went thirsty 
while you refused to do your share of the nec- 
essary work in the desperate effort to get 



Work and Happiness 111 

ashore? How do you think your companions 
would feel? Would they not be justified in 
throwing you overboard? 

Now, the human race is a great world raft, 
sailing at lightning speed through space, and 
the work of every human being on board is 
necessary to keep the raft headed in the right 
direction, and always moving toward the ap- 
pointed goal. If any one neglects to do his 
part the whole raft suffers. 

But for the blessing of work the human 
mind would go to pieces. It is good, honest, 
regular work that preserves the physical and 
mental balance and keeps us in a normal con- 
dition. 

God's medicine is work that we love. God's 
plan for man's development, his growth in 
mental and physical power and resourceful- 
ness, is work. 

It is the desire to attain, the struggle to 
realize our dreams, that unfolds our powers, 
calls, out our reserves, forms the character, 
makes the man; and there is no other possible 
way than through this exercise and through 
this evolutionary process that this great end 
can be accomplished. 



112 Love's Way 



Growth and happiness are found only in 
work; yet how most of us grumble at having 
to work so hard for everything we get! Who 
has not sometimes asked himself the question, 
"Why could not the Omnipotent cause bread 
ready made to grow on trees, and our cloth- 
ing and our homes to come to us ready for 
use, so that we could spend our time in the 
development of our intellects, in self-culture, 
in travel, in pleasure?" 

How little do the majority of us realize that 
everything that is desirable is so only because 
of its cost in effort! Supposing the Creator 
had provided everything full grown, ready 
made for our use, and that every human be- 
ing had been college educated when born; 
supposing every wish could be gratified with- 
out any effort on our part, who would want to 
live in such a backboneless, jellyfish world, 
where there was no stamina, no initiative, no 
grit, no resolution, no incentive to activity, 
and consequently no stalwart manhood, no 
strong sweet womanhood, — because these 
things would be impossible without the con- 
stant struggle to attain? Who would care to 



Work and Happiness 113 

live in a world of satisfied desires, with no 
motive for climbing? 

This is not God's way. He planned a life 
of glorious achievement and self-development 
for man through work. "Work or starve" is 
written all over the universe, on the sod and 
on the starry heavens. Ceaseless activity char- 
acterizes all life. Every substitution that has 
ever been tried for work, for personal effort, 
has been a failure. 

The man and the woman who tried to get 
the good things out of life without paying 
for them, without giving any equivalent in 
work, have been heard from. We all know 
them. They are characterless, selfish, indolent, 
greedy, overbearing, undeveloped; they never 
know what to do with themselves, they suffer 
more from ennui and satiety than they would 
ever suffer from the hardest work. They are 
always hunting for happiness but never find- 
ing it, because they don't earn it. We get the 
worth while things in life only through per- 
sonal effort. 

The chief ingredients of happiness are the 
right spirit and wholesome employment. We 
have the right spirit, when we are in harmony 



114 Love's Way 



with our environment. When we add to this 
the doing of a superb piece of work, a fine 
day's work, we feel a sense of great satisfac- 
tion because we are using the human machine 
in a normal way, in the way it was intended 
to be used. We have been exercising it to 
the best of our ability, bringing into play our 
highest faculties, and contributing our share 
to the world's wealth. 

If we have found our niche, if we are doing 
the thing we were made to do, we shall find 
no other happiness, no other satisfaction quite 
equal to that which we get out of our day's 
work. 

I have rarely known of anyone to break 
down in doing work he loved. If we were 
all in our right places, doing the thing nature 
planned us to do, our work would be almost 
like play. Where the heart is there is no 
friction or discord, and friction and discord 
are what wear life out. These are what ex- 
haust the vitality and waste the brain power. 
If you love your work, it will not deplete 
your strength, because it will not be a grind. 
On the contrary, it will be a pleasure, a per- 
petual stimulus. 



Work and Happiness 115 

The New Thought philosophy teaches that 
the mental attitude which we hold toward our 
work, or our aim in life, has everything to do 
with what we accomplish, with what life yields 
of true happiness and success. No one can 
make a real masterpiece of life until he sees 
something infinitely greater in his vocation 
than bread and butter and shelter. Until he 
sees his work as a task appointed him by the 
Father, to be done in the spirit of love, he will 
not have the right mental attitude toward it. 
Has not the Christ, whose life has taught all 
men how to live, said: "My meat is to do the 
will of him that sent me, and to finish his 
work"? And again, just before Gethsemane 
and Calvary: "Father, I have glorified thee on 
the earth; I have finished the work which thou 
gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify 
thou me with thine own self, with the glory 
which I had with thee before the world was." 

Even if you are doing something that is not 
congenial, make the best of it. Throw your 
whole soul into it. Do it with a manly, or a 
womanly spirit, in the spirit of an artist in 
love with his work, and you will rob it of its 
drudgery. Resolve that you will like it so long 



116 Love's Way 



as you are obliged to do it, and that very men- 
tal attitude will be a step in leading you to 
that work which you were really created to do. 

When you work in a grudging, unwilling 
spirit, you discourage and weaken the very 
qualities in yourself that will enable you to 
lift yourself out of an uncongenial position 
into the one you long to fill. If you have a 
level head, perseverance, and the right spirit 
you can make success enough even in the thing 
you do not like to enable you to open the door 
to your real work. 

Good work never goes unrewarded. The 
willingness to do right, the spirit which never 
tires of trying to do its best, which puts will- 
ing effort into the humblest or most disagree- 
able task — this is the spirit which accomplishes 
the great things of life. 

There is no other road to happiness than 
work. 



PRACTISING LOVE S WAY 

It was a bitter cold day, with a stinging 
wind blowing. A ragged old woman, worn 
with toil and bent under a heavy load of odd 
pieces of kindling wood strapped upon her 
back, was crossing a street when she saw the 
wind blow a poor blind organ grinder's hat off 
into the gutter. Many well-dressed people 
hurrying by also saw, but they only drew their 
furs more closely about them and passed on. 
The old woman stopped. With trembling 
fingers she untied the rope that bound the big 
load to her back, laid it down, went and picked 
up the hat and put it on the blind man's head, 
remarking, "It has been a pretty bad day. 
How have you made out?" "Not much doing 
to-day; the weather's too bad," was the answer. 

Looking into the little tin cup which held 
his pennies, the woman saw it was nearly emp- 
ty. Putting her hand in her pocket and taking 
out one of her own few pennies, she dropped 

117 



118 Love's Way 



it in the cup with a "Good luck" and then, 
readjusting her load, the good Samaritan went 
on her way. 

This is love's way. 

Love is never too burdened to be kind, never 
too poor to give, never too busy to help. It 
always finds a way to serve. 

There are one hundred and fifty or more 
blind children in the elementary grades in the 
New York public schools. These children are 
being taught to do the same work that their 
more fortunate brothers and sisters are doing. 
They are given the same examinations, and are 
judged by the same standards. They are in 
the same room with them, and are marked just 
as impartially. No allowance is made for their 
handicap. 

The teacher who has charge of the blind chil- 
dren says that their whole aim is to make the 
children forget that they are blind. 

This is love's way. 

Love seeks to make people forget their trou- 
bles and trials, their unfortunate handicaps. 
Love increases their hope, bids them look for- 
ward and upward. It stimulates their ambi- 
tion and helps them to overcome the obstacle 



Pkactising Love's Way 119 

which otherwise would hold them down and 
embitter their lives. 

A poor crippled boy classifies his friends by 
their tact, or their lack of it, in referring to 
his misfortunes. He says he often meets peo- 
ple who don't mean to be unkind, but who 
are constantly reminding him of his defect. 
They will ask him if he has always been that 
way; or if there is really no help for it; if it 
doesn't make him very unhappy, and other 
equally foolish questions. On the other hand, 
those who have enough imagination, as well as 
love, to put themselves in his place, never treat 
him as though he is inferior physically, or make 
him feel that he is placed at a disadvantage in 
life. They never refer to his handicap any 
more than if it did not exist, and he loves them 
all the more for their tenderness. These he 
ranks as his best friends. 

Real friends never remind us of personal 
blemishes or deficiencies. Nor do they upbraid 
us for our sins or shortcomings. When Eliza- 
beth Fry was doing her marvelous work among 
the prisoners in London, she was asked by a 
visitor to the prison what crime a certain girl 
prisoner had committed. "I never asked her," 



120 Love's Way 



was the reply. The great-hearted woman 
didn't want to know the girl's faults or of- 
fenses. Her one thought was to help all of the 
unfortunate women to leave their unhappy 
past and rise to the height of their possibilities. 

This is love's way. 

Love does not see the bad in others. It looks 
for the best, sees only the good. No matter 
how low a human being may fall, love still sees 
the God in him. 

There is a story that an angel was once sent 
from heaven to visit London. A guide con- 
ducted the celestial visitor through the city* 
He took him to the best art galleries and mu- 
seums, to the most beautiful parks and squares, 
to the historic monuments and public places, 
to all the show places of the great metropolis. 
The visitor politely noticed these things, but 
asked to be taken also to the poorer parts of 
the city, to the slums. The guide explained 
that these were such unlovely places, and the 
people who lived in them so degraded and 
downfallen, that it would only pain him to see 
them, and that they had better not go to those 
wretched quarters. The angel, however, urged 
that he would like to see all sides of the 



Practising Love's Way 121 

city; so the two started for the east end of 
London. 

There the guide pointed out to the angel 
men who had committed the most horrible 
crimes; women who had fallen so low that 
there was hardly a semblance of womanhood 
left, and criminals of all sorts who had been 
inmates of prisons for many years. Instead 
of turning from them in disgust, as the guide 
had expected he would, his companion went 
among the wretched people with evident pleas- 
ure, greeting them cordially, shaking hands 
with each, and telling them how glad he was 
to see them. The scandalized guide remon- 
strated with him, insisting that no respectable 
person would associate with these miserable 
creatures. "They are outcasts, ostracized by 
society," he said, "and shut out from associa- 
tion with all good people." 

"It makes no difference," answered the an- 
gel. "No matter what these people have done, 
they are all God's children. They are my 
brothers and sisters. I have lived with God so 
long that I can see the God in them. In spite 
of their condition, I feel my kinship with them. 
I sympathize with them, I pity, I love them." 



122 Love's Way 



This is love's way. 

A rich man being asked what act of his life 
had given him the most real satisfaction, re- 
plied that it was the paying off of a little 
mortgage on a poor woman's home at the mo- 
ment of a threatened foreclosure. He said 
that the happy smile, the joy and relief that 
came to the woman's face when he told her 
what he was doing had given him more happi- 
ness than any of the bigger things he had ever 
done. 

It is not the big things of life, but the aggre- 
gate of the little kindnesses, the trifling acts 
of helpfulness* the few kindly words, the little 
daily deeds of love, that give us real happiness, 
that make life worth living. Big things come 
only now and then in a lifetime, and to com- 
paratively few people ; but no matter how poor 
we are, or how uneventful our lives, we can all 
be philanthropists of kindness. We can give 
our smiles, our encouragement, our sympathy 
to someone who needs them every day in the 
year. These often mean more to a discouraged 
soul than does money. 

The more we help others, the more closely 
we touch other lives, the more we expand and 



Practising Love's Way 123 

grow ourselves, the more love and power come; 
back to us. What Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing says is literally true: 

"A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich; 
A sick man helped by thee, shall make thee strong; 
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
Of service which thou renderest." 

Did you ever lose anything by helping the 
helpless, smoothing the path of the unfortu- 
nate ? Did you ever regret lightening the bur- 
den of the distressed, encouraging those who 
have lost heart? Did you ever regret the little 
time, the little effort expended, to scatter sun- 
shine and flowers as you go along life's path- 
way? 



XI 

TRAINING THE CHILD 

Not long ago a woman applied to a New 
York district court to have her son Harold 
sent to a reformatory. 

When questioned by the magistrate as to 
her reason for wishing her son sent to such an 
institution, the distressed mother replied that 
it was because the boy was so bad she couldn't 
do anything with him. Then turning to the 
boy, the magistrate asked him why he didn't 
behave like a man and treat his mother better. 
"Because she hits my dog," was the startling 
reply. 

Further questioning revealed that a neigh- 
bor gave the lad a puppy, a little mongrel 
thing, three months old, which he had taught 
to beg, to carry things in his mouth, and to 
perform some little dog tricks. He had built 
a little house for the dog to sleep in, and had 
also earned enough money to buy a collar for 
him. 

The mother acknowledged that she consid- 

124 



Training the Child 125 

ered the dog a nuisance, and had often whipped 
him, as had the boy's older sisters. But she 
admitted that since the puppy had come to 
their home, Harold had not roved around the 
streets so much as before. The magistrate sug- 
gested that she try an experiment with the boy 
before sending him away from her, to respect 
his love for his pet, and not to abuse either 
of them. 

The woman followed the kind-hearted mag- 
istrate's advice. After a while she began to 
see that the boy was kinder to the little mon- 
grel dog than she had been to her son, and she 
began to encourage the boy and to sympathize 
with him, and instead of scolding and whip- 
ping the dog, she treated it kindly. The re- 
sult is the boy is quite changed and begin- 
ning to do wonderfully well. 

This is the sort of miracle love always effects 
when it is given a fair chance. Love is the 
great educator, the great unf older of youth. 
As the sun is the only thing that will bring out 
the sweet juices and develop the luscious flavor, 
the exquisite beauty of fruits and flowers, so 
love is the only thing that will develop the 
sweetness and the beautv of the child. It is 



126 Love's Way 



the only power that will call out the true, the 
beautiful side of its nature. It is only the hard, 
coarse, and unlovely qualities that are devel- 
oped by force and repression. 

How often would a little kindness and for- 
bearance on the part of a parent or guardian, 
a little better knowledge of child nature, do 
wonders for a so-called "bad boy" who is con- 
sidered "incorrigible," a fit subject for a re- 
formatory ! 

Judge Lindsey, who has, perhaps, a better 
knowledge of the nature of the growing boy 
and girl than any psychologist or expert in 
child study, says: "The child is a wonderful 
creature, a divine machine. We have much to 
expect from him, but he has much to expect 
from us, and what he returns depends largely 
upon what we give." 

Children instinctively admire the good and 
the beautiful. They are natural hero-worship- 
ers, and they respond enthusiastically to sto- 
ries of heroism, high endeavor, loyalty, chiv- 
alry, all the highest and best instincts of the 
race. The noblest qualities are inherent in the 
child. But wrong training — suppression, nag- 
ging, scolding, terrorizing, depriving the grow- 



Training the Child 127 

ing mind of the stimulus of good books, fine 
examples of living, the starving of its body 
through insufficient or improper food — all this 
may, and often does, turn what with proper 
training might have been a splendid boy or 
girl into a pitiable human wreck. 

The destiny of the child hangs upon its early 
environment, its parents, teachers and associ- 
ates. Upon these depend the qualities or char- 
acteristics that will be called out of its nature. 
There are seeds of all sorts of possibilities 
lying dormant in the boy and the girl. A bad 
mother, a bad teacher, by appealing to the bad 
in them, will call out the bad. A good mother, 
a good teacher, by appealing to the best in 
them, will call out the best. Evil responds to 
evil. Nobility responds to nobility. 

If you want to get the most out of your 
child, you cannot do it by repressing, by 
cramping, by watching, or by criticizing hint. 
I have known children to become so completely 
discouraged by being constantly denounced, 
scolded, perpetually reminded of their short- 
comings, their weaknesses, by being told that 
they were stupid blockheads and would never 
amount to anything, that they completely lost 



128 Love's Way 



confidence in themselves, and instead of pro- 
gressing in a natural healthy way, they con- 
stantly fell behind in their studies, in their 
work, in every way. 

How often we hear a parent talking to a boy 
after this fashion: "Now hurry up, you lazy 
good-for-nothing. What makes you so slow 
and stupid? I never saw such a blockhead! 
Why don't you get a move on you? You 
will never amount to anything, anyway!" 

These denunciations so discourage a boy 
after a while that he doesn't care, and doesn't 
try, to do his best. Then, of course, his stand- 
ards drop and he deteriorates. 

The principle so effective in animal taming 
and training is just as effective in child train- 
ing, in man and woman making. Children love 
to be praised and appreciated, just as horses 
and dogs and other animals do. Many chil- 
dren, especially those of a sensitive nature, live 
upon praise and appreciation, but the moment 
a high-spirited child is struck we naturally 
arouse his bitter resentment, his hatred, his 
antagonism. 

I know a father who every time his boy 
commits any little fault flies into a rage and 



Training the Child 129 

whips him unmercifully, and yet cannot un- 
derstand why he does not make a confidant of 
him. He complains that his son goes to other 
people for advice rather than to him, and tells 
them all his ambitions and dreams for the fu- 
ture, and that he himself cannot draw any of 
these things out of him. Of course he cannot. 
And is it reasonable to expect that he could? 

How would you feel toward a person, Mr. 
Parent, who treated you as you treat your 
boy? Would you be likely to unbosom your- 
self to him and make a confidant of him? He 
who is a friend must show himself friendly. 
You know how delicate a thing friendship is. 
You know you cannot be unkind or disagree- 
able to your friends and keep their friendship 
and admiration. Like attracts like. If you 
are brutal to your son, you can hardly expect 
to call out angelic qualities from him. 

A father should be just as careful, if not 
more so, not to forfeit the good opinion, the 
love and admiration of his son as he would be 
not to forfeit the friendship of his best friend. 
If you cannot be a friend to your boy you 
certainly cannot expect him to look up to you 
as an ideal, or even a fairly good, father. 



130 Love's Way 



Every time you punish your son in anger he 
despises you for it. He knows that you do it 
because you are stronger and claim the right 
by virtue of your fatherhood. 

You can get the confidence of your boy just 
as you can get the confidence of friends, and 
in no other way. Love and respect will come 
only in response to love and respect. If you 
love your boy in the right way, and if you 
enter into all his ambitions and life dreams 
with keen interest; if he feels that you are 
really his best friend, he will tell you everf- 
thing, and not until then. 

Many parents are distressed by the way- 
wardness of their children; but the wayward- 
ness they deplore is often more imaginary 
than real. A large part of their children's 
pranks and mischief is merely the result of 
exuberant youthful spirits. They are so full 
of energy, and so buoyant with life that it is 
difficult for them to restrain themselves. Love 
is the only power that will control them. 

A mother who has brought up a large family 
of children in the most admirable way says 
she has never applied physical punishment or 
spoken a cross word to one of them. 



Training the Child 131 

When this woman's first child was born, 
friends and neighbors said she was too good- 
natured to bring up children, that she would 
spoil them, as she would not correct or disci- 
pline, and would do nothing but love them. 
It is true, love was her only instrument of 
correction and discipline, but what splendid re- 
sults it has achieved! Love has proved the 
great magnet which has held her large family 
together in a marvelous way. Not one mem- 
ber of it has gone astray. They have all grown 
up to be noble, straightforward, self-reliant 
men and women. To-day they all look upon 
their mother as the greatest figure in the 
world. She has brought out the best in them. 
The worst did not need correcting or repress- 
ing, because the best overpowered it. The 
children always worshiped their mother, and 
the expulsive power of a stronger emotion 
drove out of their nature, or discouraged the 
development of all vicious tendencies, which, 
in the absence of a great love, might have be- 
come dominant. 

Love's way is the only way that always 
works. No human being in any part of the 
world has found that love's way has failed, 



132 Love's Way 



that it has ever been wanting. It is as stable 
and as certain as the law of gravitation. 

A young society woman, not long ago, by 
its help, succeeded in changing a group of the 
worst boys in an east side district in New 
York into earnest, self-respecting, ambitious 
youngsters. According to the social worker 
who put the boys in her charge, they "all 
smoke and shoot craps, the toughest boys on 
the east side." 

The first thing the young woman did was to 
try to replace the old evil influences which had 
made the boys what they were by something 
better. So, she invited the whole "gang," 
eighteen in all, to her home. This first party 
was a complete failure. The boys made an 
uproar; turned the place into a bedlam, and 
behaved generally as if they were in their old 
haunts. But the young woman was not dis- 
couraged. She continued her parties, and 
gradually her visitors responded to her kind- 
ness and genuine interest in them. Love, 
which is always patient, at length won out, 
and in a comparatively short time their un- 
ruly natures were subdued, and they were as 
respectful to the young woman and her father 



Training the Child 133 

as if they had been reared and trained in the 
best environment. This is love's way. 

The three great essentials for a happy 
childhood are food, love, and play. After 
food and love, play is the great builder and 
developer of childhood. Yet there are far too 
large a number of parents who are still utterly 
ignorant of, or indifferent to, the rights of 
their children in this respect. And some of 
them are a little bit like our Puritan fathers 
who, in the early history of our country, 
thought that the fun-loving, playful faculties 
were of the devil, evidences of lack of piety, 
and a great detriment to the spiritual life. 
But we know now that this is the opposite of 
the truth. We have found many more useful 
things for their development in their play than 
in some of the things taught in the schools, 
although both school and play are necessary. 

You are not loving your children, my parent 
friends, when you curtail their play, or worse 
still, shut it off altogether. This will tend to 
destroy their symmetrical development and to 
deprive them of the sound judgment and good 
sense which can only come from a symmetri- 
cally developed brain. 



134 Love's Way 



The Director of Education in the Philip- 
pine Islands says, "The games which we have 
taught the Filipinos have done for them 
more than all the other civilizing influence 
which America has brought. Before we came 
to the Islands the boys practically had no 
games and no plays. They had simple pas- 
times only. The girls had even less than their 
brothers. The games we have taught, a dozen 
or more in all, have brought these boys into 
their stronger and happier selves." 

Froebel tells us that play is in reality the 
most spiritual activity of man in childhood. 
He finds that it is "typical of human life as a 
whole — of the inner, hidden, natural life of 
man and all things; it gives, therefore, joy, 
freedom, contentment, inner and outer rest, 
peace with the world; it holds the sources of 
all that is good. The child that plays thor- 
oughly until physical fatigue forbids will 
surely be a thorough determined man, capable 
of self-sacrifice for the promotion and welfare 
of himself and others." 

The brain would be a prisoner but for the 
five senses. These five outlets connect it with 
the outside world. Without these connections 



Tkaining the Child 135 

a person would become an imbecile. Children, 
for a few years at least, find their chief outlet 
in play. 

In the earlier, crueler centuries when small 
children were sometimes imprisoned for many 
years in dark dungeons, where no light or 
sound could reach them, and where they were 
not allowed to communicate with human be- 
ings, they never developed. They became im- 
beciles. 

Christ was the first who voiced the rights 
of the child. There was a time when, if they 
were at all defective or deficient, children were 
exposed to wild animals; or if they were not 
likely to be strong and able to serve the state 
they were sacrificed. At this time the child was 
not supposed to have any rights that adults 
were bound to respect, but Christ said, "Whoso 
shall offend one of these little ones which be- 
lieve in me it were better for him that a mill- 
stone were hanged about his neck, and that he 
were drowned in the depth of the sea." 

Christ gave a new significance to the child, 
a new life and a new opportunity to it and to 
all mankind. The love leaven he implanted 
in the world has started such a tremendous 



136 Love's Way 



impulse in favor of the little child, that it is 
taking hundreds of thousands of children out 
of factories, stores, and mines, and sending 
them to school, giving them a chance for life. 

In Denmark, where children are not only 
theoretically the nation's greatest resource, 
but are treated as such, the state exercises a 
kindly supervision and care over every child, 
no matter whose it is, whether high or low, 
rich or poor. No child is allowed to go to 
waste, to become a menace to society, because 
of the parents' ignorance or indifference. 
Every boy and girl, insofar as the state can 
make it possible, is insured training for health 
and efficiency, so that they will grow up inde- 
pendent, self-respecting citizens, fully devel- 
oped physically and mentally. 

Every government should guarantee the 
inalienable right of its children to a fair chance 
in life, to all the advantages which a superb 
physique, robust health, a practical education 
and good moral training will give them. If 
all the civilized states would spend as much 
money on the proper rearing and education 
of their children as they now spend in con- 
ducting criminal trials, in supporting prisons, 



Training the Child 137 

reform institutions, schools for defectives, in- 
sane asylums and poorhouses, the need for 
such institutions would soon cease to exist. 

In New York City two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars are spent for vacation classes, 
playgrounds and evening recreation centers, 
and seventeen million to correct delinquencies 
and crimes that have their origin in the evil 
bent given to the young largely by playless 
lives. 

Ernest K. Coulter, author of "The Chil- 
dren of the Shadow" and founder of the Big 
Brother movement, made a study of the bad 
boy and girl problem for ten years in the chil- 
dren's courts of New York, and it is his 
opinion that if the community can be aroused 
to the dangers of evil environment the prob- 
lem of the bad boy can be dealt with suc- 
cessfully. 

Love by the state, love in the school and 
love in the home, but above all love in the 
home, is the great educator of the child, the 
great maker of men and women ; not the over- 
indulgent, ignorant love which makes children 
little monsters of selfishness and cruelty, but 
the wise, enlightened, divine love which knows 



138 Love's Way 



how to discipline, to withhold as well as to 
give. 

Many parents who think they love their 
children are in reality their greatest enemies. 
They bring out the worst that is in them, be- 
cause they appeal to the worst. They appeal 
to all that is frail, weak, timid, and unlovable 
in their nature, by catering to their selfishness, 
indulging every whim, no matter how un- 
reasonable or vicious, by doing everything for 
them instead of allowing them to do things for 
themselves and thus strengthen their facul- 
ties and power of self-reliance. 

They are allowed to stay at home from 
school when they "play" sick, as so many chil- 
dren do, and are petted, and coddled, and 
fussed over, when there is really nothing the 
matter with them. If they fall or hurt them- 
selves they are sympathized with and encour- 
aged to cry, by expressions of pity, instead of 
being taught to bear a little pain or hurt 
bravely and manfully and not to whimper like 
a weakling. 

In a hundred such ways, weak, foolish 
parents cultivate the selfishness of their chil- 
dren until they become unbearable; they de- 



Training the Child 139 

stroy their courage and self-reliance; make 
cowards and weaklings of them, and pave the 
way for their destruction. Many men and 
women have lived to curse in bitterness of 
heart the criminal indulgence of overfond 
parents, who were the primal cause of their 
ruin. 

Do not do for your children what they ought 
to do for themselves, but help them to help 
themselves. Do not allow them to trample 
on the rights of others in order to gratify their 
own selfish desires. Show them the beauty of 
the Golden Rule, and insist upon their prac- 
tising it in their games, with their playmates, 
and with older people. Teach them to respect 
the rights of others; but don't forget under 
any circumstances that they also have rights 
which should be respected. 

You can no more compel the love and ad- 
miration and respect of your child by con- 
stantly antagonizing, and finding fault with 
him, and showing him the unlovely side of 
your character on the one hand, or, on the 
other, pandering to every unreasonable whim, 
than a young man could compel a girl to love 
him by adopting similar means. 



140 Love's Way 



The training of a child is the most delicate 
and sacred business in the world. It is a work 
that calls for the greatest wisdom, the finest 
discernment, the most infinite patience. Love 
includes all of these. 

In training your child try love's way. 



XII 

HOW TO LIGHTEN YOUR BURDENS 

"Help the other fellow" is one of the sug- 
gestive mottoes in a western factory. It would 
be a good motto for all of us. Nothing will 
do more to lighten your own burden than help- 
ing the other fellow to bear his. 

It was love, the divine burden bearer, that 
enabled a poor apple-woman to do such service 
for others as should make those of us who 
grumble about the hard task of making a liv- 
ing blush for our self-absorption. Telling 
about her work in "The Investment of In- 
fluence," Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis says: 

"Working among the poor of London an 
English author searched out the life-career of 
an apple-woman. Her story makes the story 
of kings and queens contemptible. Events 
had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold 
and two rooms in a tenement. But there were 
three orphan boys sleeping in an ash-box, 
whose lot was harder. She dedicated her 
heart and life to the little waifs. During two 
and forty years she mothered and reared some 

141 



142 Love's Way 



twenty orphans — gave them home and bed and 
food; taught them all she knew; helped some 
to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades; 
helped others off to Canada and America. 
The author says she had misshapen features, 
but that an exquisite smile was on the dead 
face. It must have been so. She 'had a 
beautiful soul,' as Emerson said of Long- 
fellow .... Her life was a sweet episode 
in London's history. Social reform has felt 
her influence. Like a broken vase, the per- 
fume of her being will sweeten literature and 
society a thousand years after we are gone." 

Oh, marvelous power of love that lightens 
all heavy burdens and smooths all rough roads ! 
What would become of humanity were it not 
for love, which sweetens the hardest labor and 
makes self-sacrifice a joy? Without its trans- 
forming power we should still be primitive 
barbarians. 

Love is the greatest tonic to the muscles and 
to all the faculties. Luther Burbank told me 
when I visited him at his great horticultural 
farm in California that he would not employ 
men who did not love flowers and enjoy car- 
ing for them, because he said if they did not, 



How to Lighten Yotjk Burdens 143 

the flowers felt their antagonism and would 
not thrive with them as they did with people 
who loved them. Love of your work will en- 
large your life and increase your ability. Joy 
in one's tasks is what sunshine is to the fruits 
and flowers. A person can do much more and 
better work where his heart is than where it 
is not. 

What mothers endure for many years for 
their children would kill or drive them to an 
insane asylum but for love. This takes the 
drudgery out of service and lightens all bur- 
dens. It is love alone that enables the poor 
mother to go through terrible experiences in 
her struggles with poverty and sickness to rear 
her children. Love takes the sting out of 
poverty, the pain out of sacrifice. There is 
nothing too hard, too disagreeable or repul- 
sive to human nature for a mother to do for 
her children. She will toil and perspire all 
day, and then rob herself of sleep and rest, 
walking the floor night after night with a sick 
child. These services she will perform for 
weeks and perhaps months at a time, even 
when she may be ill enough to be in bed her- 
self. In fact, there is no service which it is 



1M Love's Way 



possible for one human being to render an- 
other which the loving mother will not per- 
form for her child. 

The same thing is true of the loving father, 
though his burden in the nature of things is 
rarely as heavy as the mother's. But he is 
often virtually a slave for half a lifetime or 
more for those he loves. If he is a real man, 
however, he does not complain. Love lightens 
the burden and cheers the way for the real 
man, as it does for the real woman. Where 
the heart is, there the burden is light. 

Obedience to the divine injunction, "Bear 
ye one another's burdens," is the surest way of 
making one's own life rich and beautiful. It 
was this that made Lincoln the best loved man 
in America. He was loved in his lifetime, and 
is loved to-day as perhaps no other man on 
this continent was ever loved, because of his 
kindly disposition and rare spirit of helpful- 
ness. His spontaneous desire to help every- 
body, and especially to return a kindness, 
endeared him to all who knew him. His de- 
sire to help the burden bearers, in youth as 
in later life, amounted to a passion. He 
chopped wood for the poor widows in his 



How to Lighten Your Burdens 145 

neighborhood, helped those who were out of 
work, ran errands, did chores for people, and 
in fact was known as "the man who helped 
everybody." 

Herndon, his law partner said: "When the 
Rutledge Tavern, where Lincoln boarded, was 
crowded, Lincoln would often give up his bed, 
and sleep on the counter in hi^ store with a 
roll of calico for his pillow. Somehow every- 
body in trouble turned to Lincoln for help." 

One day, while practising law in Spring- 
field, Lincoln was passing a neighbor's house, 
when he saw a little girl standing at the gate 
with her hat and gloves on, sobbing as if her 
heart would break. 

"It was the first time I had ever seen Mr? 
Lincoln," she said in telling the story to 
a friend some years afterward, when the 
Springfield lawyer had become President of 
the United States. "I was going with a little 
friend for my first trip alone on the railroad 
cars. It was an epoch in my life. I had 
planned for it and dreamed of it for weeks. 
The day came, but, as the hour of departure 
approached, the hackman failed to call for my 
trunk. As the minutes passed, I realized with 



146 Love's Way 



grief that I should miss the train. I was 
standing at the gate, crying, when Mr. Lin- 
coln came along." 

" 'Why, what's the matter?' he asked. 

" 'The hackman has not come to get my 
trunk,' I replied. 

" 'How big is the trunk?' he asked. 'There's 
time enough if it isn't too big.' He pushed 
through the gate, and my mother took him up 
to my room, where my little old-fashioned 
trunk was waiting. 

"'Oh, ho!' he cried, 'wipe your eyes and 
come on, quick.' Before I knew what he was 
going to do, he had shouldered the trunk, and 
was downstairs and striding out of the yard. 
Down the street he went, as fast as his long 
legs could carry him, I trotting behind, dry- 
ing my eyes as I went. We reached the sta- 
tion in time. Mr. Lincoln put me on the train, 
kissed me good-by, and told me to have a 
good time." 

Whether it was a little child in distress, or 
a mother pleading for the life of her boy, this 
great loving soul was always ready to lighten 
their load, to help others carry their burden. 

A candle loses nothing by giving its light 



How to Lighten Your Burdens 147 

to light another's candle which has gone out. 
We never lose anything by a kindly deed, by 
giving a helping hand to a brother wayfarer. 
On the contrary, whatever your vocation, you 
will find that if you go through life as a helper, 
a lifter, an encourager, if you give any little 
help or encouragement from day to day to the 
burden-bearers, to those who are less fortu- 
nate than yourself, you will be richer and not 
poorer for it. The habit of being kind, of 
helping others, will not only cause you in- 
finite satisfaction, but it will actually increase 
your ability because it will make you happier, 
and whatever makes you really happy in- 
creases your ability and efficiency. Whenever 
we lose an opportunity to be helpful we lose 
the blessing and the joy which attends service 
to others. 

"Without distinction, without calculation, 
without procrastination, love," says Drum- 
mond. "Lavish it upon the poor, where it is 
very easy; especially upon the rich, who often 
need it most, most of all upon our equals, 
where it is very difficult, and for whom per- 
haps we each do least of all." 

Governor Andrews, the famous war gov- 



148 Love's Way 



ernor of Massachusetts, was called the "Wide 
Liker," by the colored people who loved him 
because of his love and sympathy for them. 
Everybody who knew him loved him. They 
couldn't help it, because he had a great sympa- 
thetic, kindly heart; and, after all, it is the 
heart qualities that count. Governor Andrews 
had a great, wise head, but the poor, colored 
people did not understand much about that. 
They did understand and appreciate a great 
kind heart, and when their friend, the Gov- 
ernor, was buried, many poor, old, ragged 
colored men and women walked beside his 
coffin the whole five miles from Boston to 
Mount Auburn. 

There is one thing that is infinitely more 
desirable than wealth or fame or any other 
earthly thing, and that is the good opinion of 
your fellow men. The reputation of being 
kindly, of being helpful, of always being ready 
to give a lift to the unfortunate, is worth more 
than any amount of Eioney, because it means 
a life of service, and the satisfaction which 
comes from such a life is greater than any 
fortune can give. 

The son of a poor country clergyman who 



How to Lighten Your Burdens 149 

had such a reputation, when asked one day 
what his father was doing, said: "I don't know 
what he is doing, but I know he is helping 
somebody somewhere!" I know people like 
this clergyman who are poor in worldly pos- 
sessions, but who have always been helpers, 
boosters of others. They are always ready to 
lend a hand, to help a neighbor or to give to 
anyone in distress. 

There is none so poor that he cannot give 
in some way, and it is a heartless, soul-destroy- 
ing thing to go through the world thinking 
only of self, trying to get every possible ad- 
vantage for oneself, always looking out for 
the main chance. This kills the best thing in 
human nature, blights the finer sentiments, 
and shrivels all the qualities that win love and 
friendship. 

I would rather be a helper, a lifter of 
human beings; would rather have the satis- 
faction of giving others a lift, of encouraging 
those who are down-and-out, of lending a 
hand in time of need to those who have been 
unfortunate, and yet be poor, than have the 
wealth of a Croesus and a starved, pinched, 
loveless life therewith. 



XIII 

SURVIVAL VALUE 

Of all those who went to their doom on the 
"Lusitania," there was one whose fate aroused 
more widespread sympathy and called out 
deeper and more numerous expressions of sor- 
row than any other. That one was Charles 
Frohman, the theatrical manager — "C. F.," as 
his friends and employees affectionately called 
him. 

"Authors, actors and actresses have lost the 
greatest friend they ever had. He did more 
for them than any other manager." "No man, 
woman or child ever saw him angry or heard 
him raise his voice. I never knew him to have 
an enemy. I never heard him speak ill of 
anyone." "He filled a unique position in all 
countries and belonged to the whole world, 
which will grieve for him as I do now." "I 
have never met a kinder, straighter, more 
generous, more considerate man." "It is 
doubtful whether any man in the theatrical 
business ever lived who gave away so much 

150 



Survival Value 151 

money to charity as 'C. F.' " "If when I die," 
he once said to me, "I can do so with the love 
and respect of all my stars, all my authors, all 
my associates, all my employees, then I will 
not have lived in vain." "Wherever two or 
three people of the theatre are gathered to- 
gether, whether they be billposters or mag- 
nates, they will tell you that 'C. F.' was one 
of the squarest men ever engaged in the show 
business." 

These are but a few of the many tributes 
from friends, associates, and employees to the 
memory of Charles Frohman, heard on every 
side after the tragedy of May, 1915. They 
explain the widespread mourning for his loss. 
They emphasize the meaning of that signifi- 
cant phrase "survival value." 

This is the test of a man's work, his char- 
acter, his life — its survival value. Only that 
which is useful to humanity has longevity. 
The good deed, the helpful service, the kindly 
act, the work which benefits the race — these 
are the things that endure. 

History does not ask how much money a 
man has left, how many things he piled up 
about him, how many stocks and bonds he 



152 Love's Way 



managed to get hold of, how much land he 
held the title deed to. It cares nothing about 
the selfish life, takes no interest in the accumu- 
lation of gold. The only question history will 
ask about you after you are gone is "How 
much of a man was he? What did he do for 
his kind? Did he add anything to the com- 
fort, the convenience, the wellbeing, the happi- 
ness of his fellowmen? What service did he 
render to humanity?" 

The world erects its monuments to those 
who relate to it through their high qualities 
of manhood. It erects none to those who are 
connected with it only through their selfish 
relationship. Your contact with the world 
must be a vital one, one of helpfulness and 
service, or you will quickly be forgotten. It 
cherishes the memory of those only who have 
been useful to it, those who have given civiliza- 
tion a lift, who have in some way bettered 
the conditions of the race. It gives its love 
only to those whose hearts have beaten in 
sympathy with the race. 

Because of his immense service to mankind, 
time only makes Lincoln loom larger and 
larger as an international figure. As the 



Survival Value 153 

stress and anxiety of the war increases, one 
of the most noticeable things in England is its 
increasing admiration and appreciation of the 
greatness of the man and his # service to the 
world. Leading English publications recently 
printed long articles about him, and English 
statesmen have quoted his words and acts as 
precedents for their guidance in momentous 
crises developed during the war. 

Mr. Wu-Ting-Fang, former Chinese Min- 
ister to. the United States, said of him, "To 
Lincoln may be applied the words which a 
Chinese historian uses in describing the char- 
acter of Yao, the most revered and honored 
of the ancient rulers of China. 'His benevo- 
lence was boundless, his wisdom was pro- 
found; to anyone approaching him he had the 
genial warmth of the sun.' When viewed at 
a distance he seemed to have the mysterious 
warp of the clouds; though occupying the 
highest station, he was not haughty; though 
controlling the resources of the whole nation, 
he was not lavish; justice was the guiding 
principle of his actions ; nobleness was written 
in his face." 

Like Lincoln, the name and fame of Flor- 



154 Love's Way 



ence Nightingale are stamped for all time on 
the heart of mankind. The one was born in a 
log cabin; the other in a palatial home. But 
both lives were animated by the same passion 
for service which the world gratefully com- 
memorates, not only in monuments of bronze, 
but in undying memory. 

At a large dinner party given by Lord 
Stratford after the Crimean War, it was pro- 
posed that everyone should write on a slip of 
paper the name which appeared most likely to 
descend to posterity with renown. When the 
papers were opened every one of them con- 
tained the name of Florence Nightingale. 

What the vast resources of the British army 
had failed to do for its soldiers in the Crimea, 
the great brain, the loving heart and tender 
sympathy of this frail, delicately nurtured 
woman had accomplished. 

When Florence Nightingale went to the 
Crimea, a far larger percentage of soldiers 
were dying of disease than were being killed 
in battle. This because of the appalling un- 
sanitary conditions in the hospitals, and the 
lack of all facilities for caring for the sick and 
wounded. With a largeness of brain, only 



Survival Value 155 

equaled by her largeness of heart, she soon 
brought order out of chaos, and converted 
what had been a plague spot into a place of 
health and healing. No wonder they called 
her the "Angel of the Crimea," for the work 
she accomplished with hand and heart and 
brain was nothing short of miraculous. 

"Wherever there is disease in its most dan- 
gerous form, and the hand of the spoiler most 
distressingly nigh," wrote a Crimean corre- 
spondent of the London Times, "there is that 
incomparable woman sure to be seen; her be- 
nignant presence is an influence for good com- 
fort even amid the struggles of expiring na- 
ture. She is a 'ministering angel,' without 
any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and, as 
her slender form glides quietly along each 
corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with 
gratitude at the sight of her. When all the 
medical officers have retired for the night, and 
silence and darkness have settled down upon 
these miles of prostrate sick, she may be ob- 
served, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, 
making her solitary rounds." 

"If any one's heart is full of love and his 
hand full of service he has no morbid 'prob- 



156 Love's Way 



lems,' " said Dr. Frank Crane. "He has 
solved the riddle of life." 

With love in your heart, you have not only 
happiness, -but a power of accomplishment 
which no amount of money can give. If the 
good done by love alone could be taken out 
of the world what would be left us! There is 
nothing great, enduring, worth while on which 
it is not builded. 

Some seventy or more years ago a poor 
young curate in Brittany had an idea that the 
poor should help the poor. His salary was 
only eighty dollars a year, his friends and 
parishioners were the poorest of the poor, and 
without money he proceeded to launch his 
idea. He got together some of his friends and 
outlined to them his plan for helping those who 
were poorer than themselves. As a result, in 
a poverty-stricken attic, in a poor street, with 
two old women as its first beneficiaries, the 
Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor was 
started. And from that humble beginning has 
grown that mighty organization which now 
covers two continents and gives food and 
shelter, encouragement and help to thousands 



Survival Value 157 

and thousands of poor and aged people every 
day. 

The first helpers of the young curate were 
seamstresses and servants, who agreed to pool 
with him their little earnings for the starting 
of the enterprise. This little band has grown 
to thousands of devoted women, with more 
than two hundred and fifty houses of shelter 
for the aged and poor in Europe alone. The 
Little Sisters with their baskets or their carts 
collecting for their "children," as they call the 
occupants of the homes, are a very familiar 
sight in the large cities of Europe, and also in 
America. 

The name of the Abbe Le Pailleur, the 
poor curate who, with the munificent salary 
of eighty dollars a year, established this great 
and merciful organization, will live when 
mighty kings and emperors are forgotten. 

So will that of George Miiller, who, early 
in the nineteenth century, opened the famous 
Orphan House at Ashley Downs, England. 
He had no money to start with, but his love 
for the poor, homeless orphans inspired a 
boundless faith that God would prosper the 
undertaking. He did, and the great institu- 



158 Love's Way 



tion at Ashley Downs, supported entirely by 
voluntary contributions, has educated and 
provided for many thousands of waifs. 

Another of those great souls who in their 
love for humanity builded better than they 
knew was Annie McDonald. She was only a 
poor dressmaker who died in New York some 
years ago, and left everything she had in the 
world, two hundred dollars, as a legacy to 
start a home for crippled children. She felt 
that other charities of almost every kind had 
been attended to but the poor crippled little 
ones. She had always done what she could to 
help them when living, and with a faith that 
looks beyond obstacles she had left her little 
fortune to them, hoping and believing that it 
would suggest to others with greater means 
the necessity of establishing a home for those 
poor children. This was the beginning of the 
Daisy Fields Home for Crippled Children. 
It stands back of the Palisades, on the Hud- 
son, in the midst of a great field which in 
summer is covered with daisies. Here the chil- 
dren are cared for until they are either com- 
pletely cured or able to support themselves 
without suffering. This is love's way. 



Survival Value 159 

A man may be perfectly honest, industrious 
and self-supporting, and yet be of practically 
no value whatever to his community. To be 
of worth to your fellow-men you must be more 
than honest; you must be helpful; you must 
be a lifter ; you must have an unselfish interest 
in your kind. The man who thinks only of 
himself, no matter how much money he may 
pile up, can never win the love or esteem of 
his fellow-men. 

"So much money and so few friends," was a 
remark recently made about a New York man 
who had piled up a great deal of money, but 
had not a real friend in the world, not one who 
regarded him with affection or esteem. In 
spite of his wealth, this man, and there are 
thousands like him, is of no benefit whatever 
to his community. He is a liability rather than 
an asset. His influence is destructive. 

There must be an outlet as well as an inlet 
to a pool of water or the water -will stagnate 
and breed all sorts of vermin. It will also ex- 
hale poisonous malaria and poison its whole 
neighborhood. We, too, must give out as well 
as receive or we will stagnate. People who 
are always getting, never giving themselves or 



160 Love's Way 



their money, who are always grasping and 
hoarding, who have no outlet to. their lives, are 
a pest to society; they radiate poison. 

Getting and never giving defeats its own 
purpose, for the selfish, miserly soul never 
gives or receives happiness, I know a wealthy 
man who says nobody cares what becomes of 
him. The only motive people have in culti- 
vating him, he says, is the hope of getting 
some advantage of his wealth. He believes 
if he should lose his money no one would go 
to see him or even visit him in the hospital if 
he should be ill. 

Now, a man who has gained a fortune and 
lost his friends in the process, has failed, no 
matter how many millions he may have 
amassed. A fortune acquired through selfish- 
ness and greed by a man who has sacrificed 
his friendships, his home, his family, who has 
ground all of his time and energy into the 
dollar game, does not enrich even himself. 
The man who grinds the life out of his em- 
ployees for his own profit, who makes himself 
a sponge to pull things toward him and who 
never gives anything out is the worst sort of 
pauper. His life makes the world poorer 



Survival Value 161 

instead of richer. His death causes no re- 
gret. 

Though he may leave a fortune to endow 
charitable institutions, to build hospitals or 
colleges after his death, the selfish, greedy 
man, whose life was all bound up in his own 
welfare is soon forgotten. The world remem- 
bers and builds monuments only to those who 
are helpful to it. 

The supreme test of your work is its sur- 
vival qualities : its value to humanity. If you 
are only related to your time and to civilization 
through self-seeking; if you have only estab- 
lished relationship with your kind through a 
selfish interest you will leave no blank in the 
world when death calls you. You will leave 
only a blank to the questions — How«much of a 
man is he ? What did his life mean to the race ? 



XIV 



THE MIRACLE WORKER 



Love is the eldest and noblest and mightiest of the gods, and 
the chiefest author and giver of virtue in life and of happiness 
after death. — Pi^ato. 

An English soldier in India, who seemed 
to be a hopeless drunkard, had been brought 
time and again before his superior officer for 
drinking and severely punished. 

"Here he is again," said this officer one day, 
when the man was brought before him by a 
sergeant. "Flogging, disgrace, solitary con- 
finement, everything we can think of, has been 
tried to cure this man of drinking and it is no 
use. He is hopeless." 

"Pardon me, sir," the sergeant said, "but 
there is one thing that we haven't tried yet." 
"Well, sir, what is it?" "He has never been 
forgiven, sir." "Forgiven!" shouted the offi- 
cer, with a look of blank astonishment, but 
turning to the culprit he said, "What have you 
to say to this charge." "Nothing, sir," re- 
plied the man; "only I am awfully sorry for 

162 



The Miracle Worker 163 

having got drunk again." "Well," said the 
officer, "we certainly have tried everything 
with you, and now we are going to do as the 
sergeant suggests, try one thing more ; we are 
going to forgive you." 

Tears streamed down the man's face as if 
he were a child, and thanking the officer he 
retired, apparently a hopeless victim of drink. 
But no, this first kindness of his Colonel 
touched his heart, and he resolved that he 
would never drink again. The chaplain of his 
regiment, who told the story, said that the man 
became a model soldier and never again had 
to be reprimanded for drinking. 

The miracle worked in this drunken soldier 
by forgiving love is proof that the age of 
miracles has not passed. It will never pass 
while love endures, for love is continually 
working miracles in all sorts of people. 

The possibilities of a single individual as 
illustrated in "The Passing of the Third Floor 
Back" to revolutionize a whole household by 
the power of love alone are not exaggerated. 

Those who have seen or read the play will 
remember how, in response to an advertise- 
ment in a London paper, "Boom to let, third 



164 Love's Way 



floor back," comes a remarkable man, who is 
given the title of "The Stranger." This man 
takes the third floor back, and finds himself 
in a boarding-house filled with questionable 
characters. Among them are petty thieves, 
gamblers, a rogue, a bully, a snob, a shrew, 
people who had led fast lives, and all sorts of 
uncharitable, envious, men and women. They 
stoop to every kind of meanness. One woman 
even steals candles. Every one tries to cheat 
every one else and is cheated in return. The 
landlady is of the same type as her boarders. 
She preys on them and they prey on her. She 
waters the milk, adulterates the food, steals 
and overcharges, and then to keep herself from 
being robbed she puts everything under lock 
and key. 

In spite of the fact that they all make fun 
of the newcomer because he does not fall into 
their vicious ways, he takes no offense, but on 
the contrary gives them kindness and courtesy 
in return. Not only that, but he seems to see 
in each of them something good, some fine 
qualities or talents which they had not discov- 
ered themselves. Beneath all their wicked- 
ness, their dishonesty, their licentiousness, 



The Miracle Worker 165 

their gambling propensities, he recognizes in 
these unfortunate people the divinity of their 
being, the reality of themselves. 

He would talk to the rogue about his splen- 
did ability, his latent powers, the resources 
which he was not using, the great possibilities 
there were in him. He would tell the bully 
what fine things he was capable, of doing if he 
would only arouse and get hold of his real 
self. He assured one young man who took 
especial delight in making fun of him, that he 
really had great artistic ability which he should 
cultivate. To another he pointed out his un- 
usual musical talent. And so, he tried to en- 
courage each in turn, his whole aim being to 
arouse the divinity in his fellow-boarders, to 
show them that there was something better in 
them than what they were using. 

The bully and the "painted lady," his wife, 
had managed to get their daughter engaged 
to a man of wealth, although she did not love 
him. But she was going to sell herself for 
money, as that was what her parents were 
after. The new boarder persuaded the girl 
to listen to her own heart, and marry only the 
man she loved. This she finally did, and the 



166 Love's Way 



rich man, whose money her parents had cov- 
eted, under the influence of the occupant of 
the third floor back, became her very helpful 
friend. 

Under the same benign influence the shrew- 
ish landlady was also transformed. She 
ceased watering the milk, adulterating the 
foods, stealing from her boarders, and locking 
things up to guard against their stealing from 
her. She began to trust people, to trust her- 
self, to have more respect for herself and 
others. She turned over a new leaf in her treat- 
ment of her poor little "slavey" who, previous 
to the new boarder's advent, had received noth- 
ing from her but abuse and ill treatment. 

She had constantly taunted the girl with 
the fact that she had been an inmate of 
the workhouse, that she was a nobody, that 
she didn't amount to anything and never 
would. And although she worked the girl 
nearly to death, she rarely* gave her an even- 
ing off. Now the woman's manner began to 
soften toward her, and one day she surprised 
the girl by telling her she looked tired and 
that she had better run out doors for a change. 
In fact, the hitherto harsh, slave-driving mis- 



The Miracle Worker 167 

tress became kind and considerate, more like 
a mother than a brutal employer. 

The poor slavey herself was an object of 
especial interest to the Stranger. He per- 
sistently encouraged her and tried to show her 
that she was not the nobody her mistress had 
been telling her she was, and like all the others 
he inspired her with a new feeling of respect 
for herself and a new and enlarged estimate 
of her possibilities. Through the stimulus of 
the love spirit she ultimately became a fine, 
self-reliant, noble woman. 

In a short time, the whole atmosphere of the 
house was changed. Every occupant of it re- 
sponded to the divine influence of the gentle, 
unobtrusive lodger who was really a personifi- 
cation of the Christ spirit. He had shown 
every man and woman of that discordant 
jangling household his or her better self, and 
so, literally, made them anew. They had been 
born again.* 

This is what love always does. It turns a 
person around so that he sees things in a dif- 

* This and other illustrations in this volume, which in a very 
beautiful way emphasize the rewards of love and service, have 
been adapted from other books of the author. 



168 Love's Way 



ferent light, faces life in a different way. It 
puts a new spirit in him ; it gradually neutral- 
izes or drives out of the nature all selfishness, 
all greed, all unkindness, all uncharitableness. 

Love is the most potent influence in life. 
It is infinitely more powerful than the gam- 
bling instinct, than the lust instinct, than the 
greedy, grasping instinct. It neutralizes all 
the baser passions and instincts. It touches 
the God in man. It is the divine leaven of love 
which uplifts and ennobles the whole nature. 

Who has not seen the magic power of love 
in transforming brutal, dissolute men into re- 
fined and devoted husbands? I have known 
women who had such great, loving, helpful 
hearts, and such charm of manner, that the 
worst men, the most hardened characters 
would do anything in the world for them — 
would give up their lives even to protect them. 
These men could not be touched by unkind- 
ness or compulsion. Love was the only power 
that could reach them. 

"To love, and to be loved," said Sydney 
Smith, "is the greatest happiness of existence." 
Every one, rich and poor, high and low, is 
reaching out for love. What will not a man 



The Miracle Worker 169 

do to win the love of one who embodies his 
ideal of womanhood; one in whom he sees all 
the beautiful qualities that he himself lacks! 
This love is really a divine hunger, the long- 
ing for possession of what will make him a 
whole man instead of the half one he feels 
he is. 

Why is it that when a coarse-grained, brutal, 
dissipated man falls in love with a sweet, pure 
girl he immediately changes his ways, looks 
up, thinks up, braces up, drops his profanity, 
is more refined, more choice in his language, 
more exclusive in his associations, and is, to 
all appearances, for the time at least, a 
changed man? Simply because love is a more 
powerful motive to the man than dissipation. 
He drops the latter, and if his love is steady 
and true he will never again indulge in any 
degrading practice. 

One of the most brutal human beings I ever 
saw, fallen as low as a human being possibly 
could, was an illiterate man who, though still 
young, had spent years in prison for different 
offenses, fell in love with a beautiful young 
woman, a school teacher, to whom he told his 
story. She became interested in him from the 



170 Love's Way 



first and began to teach him to read. Closer 
association with the man showed her his possi- 
bilities and latent good qualities, and gradu- 
ally she grew to love him. 

Then the leaven of love began to work in 
the man's nature. His coarse, vulgar man- 
ners immediately softened. He showed more 
refinement in speech and manner. The fear- 
ful profanity in which he used to indulge 
dropped from him little by little. He was 
seen less and less in saloons and dives. He 
began to clean up and to dress up. He took 
more interest in his work and for the first 
time in his life began to save money. Finally 
the school teacher married him and his trans- 
formation was completed. He was a devoted 
husband and became an able and useful citizen. 

I recall another instance of the redeeming 
power of love somewhat similar to this. A 
very pessimistic, ill-dispositioned man fell 
desperately in love with a sweet young girl, 
who in spite of his repellent qualities loved 
him and believed she could see the making of 
a man in him. With all of his other bad quali- 
ties, he was subject to frightful fits of the 
blues, which would last him for days. While 



The Mikacle Worker 171 

< i 

in their grip he would suffer terribly, believing 
that there was nothing in life worth living for. 

The girl married him and soon experienced 
the evil effects of his harsh, gloomy nature. 
But she was not discouraged and began the 
experiment of laughing him out of his blues, 
and in all sorts of ways trying to change the 
tenor of his thoughts. She was a student of 
the New Thought philosophy of life, and was 
always bright, cheerful, and hopeful. She was 
constantly telling her husband that happiness 
was his birthright, that being God's child he 
was not made to express any unfortunate 
qualities, and that the divine in him could and 
should dominate the human, the animal. She 
reminded him that his Maker was his partner, 
that consequently he was in touch with the 
Infinite Source of all things, and that all that 
was beautiful and true, all that was desirable 
in the universe, all the good things, were his 
if he would only claim them by developing his 
God consciousness. 

The young wife never ceased in her efforts, 
always using love's way in whatever she tried 
to do for her husband. Where he had pre- 
viously used the opposite, she persuaded him 



172 Love's Way 



to substitute love's way. She showed him that 
love was the cure, the healing balm for all his 
weaknesses, all his unhappiness, all his diffi- 
culties, and all his unfortunate qualities. 

It may have been a dangerous experiment 
for the girl, but the results were magical. 
After a few months of the love treatment this 
man became so changed in disposition, in per- 
sonal appearance, in manner, in habits, in his 
conversation and life generally, that his old 
friends and acquaintances scarcely knew him. 
His nature had unfolded just as a plant un- 
folds when taken out of an inhospitable en- 
vironment and placed in a warm, congenial 
atmosphere. The man's new environment, the 
sun of his wife's love, had nourished his na- 
ture and brought out the possible divine man. 
Before his marriage he had merely been ex- 
pressing his lower self, his brute nature. But 
now his life has blossomed into beauty ; he has 
become a strong, splendid man. He is ex- 
pressing his higher, his real, self. 

Love always finds the God in us, because it 
refuses to see anything else. Where there is 
apparently only a weakling or a coward, love 
sees a hero. It sees the good citizen, the good 



The Mieacle Worker 173 

husband, the good father in the meanest hobo, 
in the most degenerate beggar that crawls in 
his rags. Love sees only the ideal man or 
woman, the being made in his Creator's image, 
which persists in every one of us no matter 
how low we may have fallen. 

The loving mother does not see the criminal 
in her son. No matter what his faults or 
blemishes, she looks beyond them to the divine 
ideal. She sees an ideal man. She sees him 
as God sees him, not as society sees him, not 
as the judge on the bench sees him. 

How often we hear the expression: "How 
that mother can see any good in that ugly brat 
of hers is more than I can understand." But 
the mother does see something beautiful in 
that "ugly brat"; she sees great possibilities 
in her boy, where others see none. She sees 
him in the years ahead a good husband, a 
good father, a good citizen. The fond mother 
does not see her homely or defective child as 
other people see it. She sees her boy growing 
into a splendid man with all his possibilities 
unfolded and given expression. She does not 
see her crippled girl as other people see her. 
She looks beyond the physical deformity, and 



174 Love's Way 



sees the soul, the reality of the child, the truth 
of its being. She sees the superb woman in 
possibility, and makes all sorts of sacrifices so 
that her loved ones shall develop into the men 
and women God meant them to be. 

The wife, who is faithful in spite of many 
disillusions and disappointments, does not see 
in the man she loves the dishonest, brutal, lust- 
ful husband. She sees only her ideal of man- 
hood, the possibilities that still are his. The 
husband does not see in the woman he married 
the nagging, gossiping, mischief-making wife ; 
he sees only his ideal of womanhood; he sees 
what love sees, only the good, only the pure, 
only the true, only the ideal girl he first loved. 

Love sees no evil, thinks no evil, knows no 
evil. It sees, thinks, knows only the good, the 
pure, the clean, the true. Love goes through 
the world radiating sunshine and gladness, 
purifying the atmosphere everywhere, never 
seeing the bad in human beings because it is 
too much occupied in looking for the good. 

It is difficult to imagine what would become 
of the race if love did not see the ideal, the per- 
fect man, the man God intended instead of the 
burlesque man, the weak, deficient being that 



The Miracle Worker 175 

hatred and all forms of error have made him 
appear. 

Browning said, "Love is energy of life." 
Love certainly is the greatest energy we know 
anything about. It is love that moves the 
world. No other human agency has been half 
so powerful for good. No other can lift man 
to the divine. 



XV 

OUR LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS 

I would not enter on my list of friends 

(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 

Yet wanting sensibility), the man 

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. 

Cowper. 

A famous dog trainer says, "My dogs will 
do anything to please me." Beating is no 
good. It only calls out resentment and re- 
sistance. No matter how often they fail, he 
says, his dogs will try over and over and over 
again to do what he wants them to do, because 
they know that when they succeed they are 
going to get what they love so much, a lot of 
petting and praise. 

Love has taken the wolf out of the dog and 
given us instead the most faithful and affec- 
tionate of animals. It has evolved our house 
cat from the ferocious wild cat. The same is 
true of other domestic animals. Kindness has 
trained the savage beasts of the jungle and 
forest and made them household pets, play- 
mates and protectors of our children. 

176 



Little Brothers and Sisters 177 

Rosa Bonheur, the great painter and lover 
of animals, bought from the owner of a me- 
nagerie a lion which he declared untamable. 
The artist, however, believed that love would 
accomplish the impossible. "In order to se- 
cure the affections of wild animals you must 
love them," she said, and in a comparatively 
short time her love had effected what the lion 
tamer had given up as hopeless. She used to 
play with and fondle the huge animal as if he 
were a kitten. When old and blind he died 
with his great paws clinging affectionately to 
the mistress whose love had tamed him. 

It is interesting to see how quickly even the 
fiercest animals yield to the magic of love. 
Under the kindly treatment of one who really 
loves them, one who, like St. Francis, looks 
upon them as his "little brothers and sisters," 
the wild expression gives place to a milder, 
gentler one; the suspicious look is replaced by 
a trustful one; the brute nature is gradually 
softened, and distrust gives way to confidence ; 
affection takes the place of dislike and fear; 
love goes out to meet love. The more love we 
give to any animal, the gentler and more 
tractable it becomes. Note the gentle, peace- 



17$ Love's Way 



ful face of a cow or a horse which has been 
brought up as a family pet. Such animals 
would no more step on or injure a child than 
we would ourselves. We love and trust them, 
and they love and trust us in return. 

Some time ago there was on exhibition in 
New York a young horse which could do the 
most marvelous things, and yet his trainer said 
that only four years before he had had a very 
bad disposition. He was fractious, vicious, 
would kick and bite and do all sorts of bad 
things. But four years of kindness had com- 
pletely transformed the vicious yearling colt 
into one of the kindest and most affectionate 
animals in the world. He was not only obe- 
dient and tractable, but had been trained to 
do all sorts of unusual things. He could 
readily count and reckon up figures, and could 
even spell many words, whose meaning he 
seemed to understand. In fact, he seemed to 
be capable of learning almost anything, and 
the whole secret of his transformation and rare 
intelligence was due to kindness and love. His 
trainer said that in all the four years he had 
touched him with a whip but once. 

Years ago Mr. Daniel Boyington proved 



Little Brothers and Sisters 179 

to Texas cowboys, and others, that there was 
a better way of taming and subduing horses 
than the old brutal way of literally "breaking 
them." 

"At first," says a writer, "he was hooted and 
jeered at, and the news that 'Uncle Dan was 
coming' was the signal for the larking cow- 
boys to get together all the 'outlaws' and con- 
demned horses for miles around, anticipating 
great sport in seeing them 'do up the old 
man' or 'run the professor plumb out of the 
corral.' 

"When they had seen 'the professor' go into 
the corral without whip, rope, or hackamore, 
and had seen him subdue, pet, saddle, bit, and 
ride the most vicious horse in the bunch within 
three or four hours; when they had seen the 
trembling outlaw rub its nose against his 
shoulder and eat out of his hand, they said 
that it was hypnotism or magic. They accused 
him of 'doping' the horses, and privately of- 
fered him big bribes to tell them what charm 
or medicine he used. 

" 'Uncle Dan' only shook his head and 
laughed, and his answer was always the same. 
'The only charm I use, boys, is the Golden 



180 Love's Way 



Rule. Treat a horse as you would like to be 
treated if you were a horse yourself. There 
is never any need for any one to beat or abuse 
a horse, for there is no creature living more 
faithful or loving, if you are only kind and 
patient with him. Teach him to love and have 
confidence in you, and give him time to find 
out what you want, then he will serve you not 
only willingly, but gladly and proudly. The 
best charm that any man can use in breaking 
a horse is kindness." 

Someone has said that when a man really 
"gets religion" his horse soon finds it out. Yet 
it is a strange thing that many devoted church 
members, who firmly believe they are among 
the "righteous" are often cruel to their horses. 
And there is not a day that hundreds of these 
noble animals are not brutally maltreated in 
our city streets. How often do we see drivers 
unmercifully beating and abusing poor tired 
horses who are doing their best to carry their 
cruel burdens ! But we utter no protest. We 
know it is wrong to allow the poor animals 
to be abused, but we are too cowardly to take 
the chances of exposing ourselves to ridicule 
or possible abuse from the driver, and pass 



Little Brothers and Sisters 181 

on, leaving the helpless dumb creatures in their 
misery. 

The lack of courage, the fear of being 
thought peculiar, keeps many people from do- 
ing kind things which their hearts prompt. 
Only the few have the manhood or the. woman- 
hood to brave the ridicule of the coarse and 
unthinking for the sake of love. 

One cold, blustering day last winter, one of 
these few, a woman, saw a horse standing in 
the street whose blanket had been blown off. 
The woman saw that the animal was shivering 
with cold, and she went and picked up the 
blanket and replaced it on his back. But the 
wind was strong and blew the blanket off 
again. The woman again replaced it, and this 
time firmly tucked it in, while she patted the 
horse's head. A crowd of men meanwhile had 
gathered on the sidewalk and stood watching 
her as much as to say: "I wonder what is the 
matter with that woman. She must be pe- 
culiar, out of her head." The idea of a fine 
looking, well-dressed woman getting out in 
the street, picking up a blanket and putting 
it on a horse, was something they could not 



182 "Love's Way 



understand. They thought her abnormal or 
eccentric. 

Whether our unkindness or cruelty to the 
animals below us in the scale of evolution is 
active or passive, we will certainly have to 
answer for it in this life or some other. Elbert 
Hubbard goes so far as to say that: "When a 
man forgets his dumb brothers, and is dead 
to their fears, sufferings and agonies, he has 
lost his own soul. Am I my dumb brother's 
keeper? Certainly, yes, and thou shalt give 
an account of thy stewardship!" 

I cannot see how anybody can gaze into the 
depths of the eyes of a dog without seeing 
there something akin to himself, something 
which responds to the deep within himself. 
For myself I can see there that which is on 
its way to something higher. I can see there 
a spirit of devotion, a spirit of love which be- 
speaks the divine. 

How can you, how can anyone, abuse a dog 
who the more you whip him the more desper- 
ately he clings to you? Perhaps you have 
never thought what you represent to him. 
Did it never occur to you that you are his 
God; that he knows nothing higher than you, 



Little Brothers and Sisters 183 

the source of his food, of all the affection he 
knows, of everything he has? So far as he is 
concerned you are the highest thing in the uni- 
verse, and when you abuse him, his very sense 
of separateness from the greatest power he 
knows of makes him miserable. There is no 
happiness for him until his connection with 
you is re-established. 

The next time you are tempted to abuse 
your dog, your horse, or any dumb animal, 
just look into his eyes and see if you can't 
recognize something there back of the brute, 
something which speaks through the animal 
that is not animal. These dumb animals have 
rights which the Creator has given them, and 
which man is bound to respect, even as he is 
bound to respect the rights of his fellow-man. 

When a boy, Theodore Parker once came 
across a tortoise and raised a stick to kill it, 
when something within whispered to him not 
to, that it was wrong to kill an innocent crea- 
ture that had done him no harm. He dropped 
the stick, went home and told his mother of 
the incident. She made it the text of a talk 
which he said influenced his entire life. 

It is comparatively easy to create a senti- 



184 Love's Way 



ment of sympathy and love for these dumb 
animals in growing children, and the creation 
of such a sentiment in youth will have a won- 
derful influence upon their after-life. Teach 
your boy and your girl that a real man, a real 
woman, always champions the cause of the in- 
nocent and helpless birds and animals, that a 
really noble soul never injures or causes pain 
to creatures who have no way of appealing 
to him, who cannot plead their own cause, 
whose very helplessness should enlist his sym- 
pathy and protection. All children should be 
taught that the Creator has put the lower 
animals in our care and that He will hold us 
responsible for our treatment of them. I be- 
lieve with Ella Wheeler Wilcox that: "If 
every child living to-day were made to realize 
this sense of responsibility, and to feel sympa- 
thy, protection and love for the helpless ani- 
mals, the deformed, sick or penniless humans, 
more than two-thirds of the sorrow, suffering 
and sin on earth would vanish in one genera- 
tion." 

During the Spanish-American War an offi- 
cer in the United States army one day noticed 
a corporal in a colored regiment who was 



Little Brothers and Sisters 185 

carrying his own gun and that of a wounded 
comrade, two cartridge belts, two knapsacks, 
and a dog. The day was very hot, and many 
of the soldiers were nearly prostrated. The 
officer stopped the corporal and said to him, 
"Look here, didn't you march all last night?" 
"Yes, sir," said the corporal. "And didn't 
you fight all day?" "Sure, sir." "And haven't 
you been marching ever since ten o'clock to- 
night?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then," shouted the 
officer, "what in the mischief are you carrying 
that dog for?" "Why, boss, you see it's this 
way, this dog's tired!" 

This young fellow was made of the right 
kind of stuff, and evidently had had the right 
kind of training in childhood. Though bur- 
dened with the equipment of two men, he 
thought there was reason enough to add to his 
burden because his dog was so tired. The true 
man is always as tender as he is brave. 

Most boys pass through what we may call 
the "hunting" age, the destructive age. They 
want to own a gun; they want to shoot some- 
thing. And as long as hunting and wantonly 
killing wild things is recognized as "manly 
sport," it is hard to make boys believe that 



186 Love's Way 



there is really nothing manly in killing things 
merely for the fun of it; that it is, on the con- 
trary, infinitely more manly to champion the 
cause of the hunted, to protect the birds and 
the animals from inhuman slaughter. 

To take pleasure in killing innocent animals 
for sport is a relic of barbarism. How can 
any humane man get real fun out of the suf- 
ferings of animals, real fun from shooting the 
mother of bear cubs, for instance, and seeing 
the pathetic mourning of these baby bears as 
they climb upon their dead mother and try to 
attract her attention? How any man can find 
delight in breaking the wing of a mother bird 
when he knows that the young nestlings are 
waiting in the nest with wide open mouths for 
their mother's return is more than I can under- 
stand. Sportsmen do not seem to realize that 
the homes of these little creatures are just as 
sacred to them as the hunters' homes are to 
them, yet they do not hesitate to break them 
up by killing one or both the parents, leav- 
ing their young to suffer, perhaps die, from 
neglect ! 

What can we think of the degree of soul 
culture of people who will slaughter animals 



Little Brothers and Sisters 187 

simply to make a holiday for themselves! I 
often wonder if these people ever read the 
beatitudes, especially that one which says, 
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall ob- 
tain mercy." How can men who are not 
merciful to poor innocent dumb animals ex- 
pect mercy themselves? 

The time will come, and very soon, when 
the man who takes pleasure in killing any- 
thing, who goes slaughtering for mere sport, 
will be labelled "inhuman," and will be ostra- 
cized by all decent people. There are tens of 
thousands of men who ten years ago, some even 
five years ago, delighted in hunting, who could 
not be induced to go hunting to-day. Many 
of them have told me that they were ashamed 
to think they could ever have taken delight 
in such savage sport. 

Mr. W. J. Stillman, once a "sportsman," 
some time ago, in "A Plea for Wild Animals" 
wrote: "The ghastly memories of all the game 
I ever in my wild life slaughtered do not give 
me the pleasure which I have found in teach- 
ing a wild creature to forget his inheritance 
of fear of mankind. Many trout have I lured 
from their deep hiding-places, but none with 



188 Love's Way 



the keen satisfaction I have had in teaching 
a trout to rise at recognition of my approach- 
ing footfall, to submit to my caressing, as if 
he were a creature of the air rather than of 
the mud." 

What shall be said of those more cold- 
blooded men and women who, not having the 
excitement of the chase as an excuse, desert 
their domestic pets, and leave them to die of 
starvation, or to suffer a cruel death in the 
streets? Not long ago the Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals one summer, 
in the month of July, took into their custody 
fifteen thousand dogs and cats, eleven hundred 
and seventy-five in one day. Most of these, 
especially the cats, had been left by their own- 
ers, who had gone out of town for the summer, 
without any means of care or feeding. The 
majority of these people were probably church 
members who thought they had "got religion !" 

What a rebuke to such brutality is the story 
of the kindness of a little untaught street Arab 
to a sick sheep. One who witnessed the inci- 
dent tells how this young tatterdemalion, one 
of a gang of boys on the street, went to a 
water trough and several times filled his old 



Little Brothers and Sisters 189 

battered leaky hat with water and took it to 
a poor half fainting sheep in a flock which was 
being driven along the street. Time and again 
the sheep had tried in vain to push with the 
others to the water in the trough and had fi- 
nally dropped on the pavement utterly ex- 
hausted. The water given it by the boy 
quickly revived the animal and enabled it to 
go along with the others. 

One of the "gang" began to twit the boy 
and asked him if the sheep said "Thank you, 
Papa." "I didn't hear it," said he, but there 
was a light in the boy's face which told the 
bystanders that he felt the pleasure that al- 
ways comes from the performance of a kind 
act. The untaught ragged boy made several 
well-dressed people who were passing along 
feel very cheap and very mean because they 
had made no effort to help the poor sheep out 
of its suffering. 

In a plea for justice, love and mercy for all 
living things, a New Thought writer says: 
"We, then, are tongues for our brothers dumb. 
We voice their hurt. We demand their jus- 
tice — that it be done unto them in full measure 
heaped up and running over. We plead their 



190 Love's Way 



love that it have its full and recognized part 
in the Love Universal. Out of the symphony 
of this Love Universal we would exclude not 
one life. We would have it there, voicing at 
'full-throated ease.' Until the Universe ex- 
cludes it, not one life would we exclude from 
our love, and, until the Universe can exclude 
something of itself and still be a perfect Uni- 
verse, safe in its Love is every life which it 
has hallowed into living; and as beautifully 
safe should it be and is it in the thinkings of 
New Thought." 

If we expect to commune with God, to 
come into the consciousness of our union with 
Him, we must have the right mental attitude 
toward all of His creatures. If we are to 
realize our oneness with God, we must real- 
ize our oneness with His creation. We must 
love His creatures as He loves them. We 
cannot hold the God-consciousness, we cannot 
expect God's blessing, when we make sport of 
killing His dumb creatures, or when we are 
brutal to them in any way, any more than we 
can expect to get His blessing through our 
prayer, when at the same time we are taking 
advantage of our employees, cheating them, 



Little Brothers and Sisters 191 

by paying them such stingy salaries that they 
are tempted to piece them out in illegitimate 
ways. 

In the early history of the race might was 
the only recognized right. The weakest was 
always afraid of the strongest. There was no 
thought of the rights of dumb animals. But 
a new order came with the Sermon on the 
Mount. Love was born into the world and 
it is gradually teaching man that all life is one, 
and that what we call the "lower animals" are 
in reality our little brothers and sisters. 



XVI 

THE THING THAT MAKES A HOME 

Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox 
and hatred therewith. — Prov. 15:17. 

The heart needs not for its heaven much space, nor many- 
stars therein, if only the star of Love has arisen. — Richter. 

"He is the happiest, be he king or peasant," 
said Goethe, "who finds peace in his home." 

That peace is found only where the love 
spirit dwells, the spirit of mutual helpfulness 
and willing self-sacrifice. It may be within 
the four walls of a house, it may be in a tent, 
in a forest, on a prairie, or in a desert ; it may 
be in a palace, or in a log cabin; it may be 
in a manger in a stable, as in the case of the 
child Jesus and his mother ; it does not depend 
upon material things; it is born of the spirit 
and is sustained only by friendship, love, and 
sympathy. 

Some time ago while visiting friends I was 
greatly impressed by the influence of one 
member of the family in creating this beauti- 
ful home spirit. Though only a young girl — 

192 



The Thing That Makes a Home 193 

the youngest of the family — she seemed to 
take the place of the mother, who was dead. 
She was the center of the home. Nothing of 
importance was undertaken by anyone in it 
without first consulting her. Not one of them 
would leave the house without first kissing her 
good-by, and she was the first one they sought 
when they came home. They all seemed 
anxious to confide in her, to tell her what had 
happened to them during the day, to have her 
opinion and advice in all difficulties. And the 
father relied on her as much as the rest of 
the family. 

The secret of this young girl's influence lay 
in her unselfishness, her great interest in every- 
thing that concerned the others. In talking 
with her brothers I discovered that each 
thought his sister was especially interested in 
him and his affairs, and that he would not 
think of undertaking or deciding anything 
that required consideration without first talk- 
ing it over with her. Each and all of them 
seemed to prefer her company to that of any 
other young lady, and were always proud to 
escort her when she went anywhere. Those 
boys are all clean-minded, open, frank and 



194 Love's Way 



chivalrous, and I could not help thinking that 
a great deal of it was due to the sister's love 
for them and theirs for her. 

One reason why a home like this is the 
sweetest, most beautiful spot on earth, is be- 
cause of the love atmosphere; the harmonious 
vibrations it starts give a blessed sensation of 
rest, of peace, of security and power. The 
moment we enter such a place we feel its 
soothing, reassuring, uplifting influence. It 
produces a feeling of mental poise, of serenity 
which we do not experience elsewhere. 

Where love and affection are habitually vi- 
brating through the cells of the body they 
affect both health and character. They impart 
a sweetness and strength, a peace and satis- 
faction that reinforce the whole being. Har- 
mony soothes and strengthens. Discord lacer- 
ates and weakens. The character of people 
who keep themselves continually stirred up 
by discordant emotions is skeptical, unlovely, 
selfish. There is nothing outside of vice which 
will so quickly react on mind and body as liv- 
ing in an atmosphere of perpetual inharmony 
and ill feeling. 

Discordant homes are responsible for more 



The Thing That Makes a Home 195 

illness, as well as unhappiness, than almost 
any other one cause. In families where there 
is continual wrangling, faultfinding and nag- 
ging, someone is ill nearly all the time. It 
often happens that a member of such a family, 
delicate, sensitively organized, very impres- 
sionable, suffers for years, while no physician, 
at least no orthodox physician, can correctly 
diagnose the case or give permanent relief, be- 
cause the. trouble comes from the inharmony 
in the home. 

Some years ago I was one of an audience 
which -seemed much disgusted because the 
speaker suggested that most of those present 
had probably come from hell, that is, a hell 
of discord in the home or in their business, a 
hell of unhappiness, a nagging, distrustful, 
criticising hell, a hell of hatred and jealousy 
and utter misery. Yet he may not have been 
far wrong in his estimate, for there, are many 
people who 'have money enough to get any- 
thing they want except peace and happiness. 
These cannot be bought for money. And so 
multitudes of people are really living in hell; 
that is, they are living amidst strife, jealousies, 
and hatreds which drive love out of the home, 



196 Love's Way 



for love will not stay where there is discord, 
it will not live with dissension. 

Multitudes of rich people are bitterly dis- 
appointed because love does not seem to ap- 
preciate the value of money. They are sur- 
prised that it will live in a hovel with bare 
floors and pictureless walls, but will run away 
from palatial mansions. 

I have in mind two homes which show love's 
way in this respect. One is that of people in 
very moderate circumstances, who can afford 
only the simplest sort of furniture, and whose 
style of living is as unassuming as their sur- 
roundings. But the instant you enter the 
house, you feel that atmosphere, that indefin- 
able something, which alone makes the true 
home. The other is that of a multi-millionaire 
in a fashionable quarter of New York. There 
is everything in this mansion that money can 
buy, that the decorator or the artist can sug- 
gest. One sees on every side priceless works 
of art, mural paintings, costly decorations, 
rare imported rugs, tapestries, all sorts of 
luxuries and curios. The owner told me that 
he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for 
a few pieces of tapestry ; and his library, which 



The Thing That Makes a Home 197 

contains rare manuscripts and books, repre- 
sents a large fortune. As I was shown one 
day through this vast establishment, it seemed 
to me more like a cold, loveless museum than 
a home. There was a total lack of that sweet 
home spirit which makes many a little cabin 
a paradise in comparison with a palace without 
it. 

I understood the reason for this lack when 
I learned that there was constant friction be- 
tween the husband and wife, who lived in this 
particular palace. They had everything but 
love and harmony; and lacking these, in spite 
of all their money, they had nothing worth 
while. Money could not buy that spirit of 
sympathy, mutual helpfulness and love, with- 
out which it is impossible to make a home. 
Later a divorce ended the semblance of a union 
between these two. 

Woman is pre-eminently the home maker. 
It is she who makes the house homelike and, 
above all, contributes the spirit that makes it 
a sacred place. Man may provide the material 
things necessary for its establishment and 
maintenance, but he is powerless to give it a 
soul. It is only a woman, as Charles Wagner 



198 Love's Way 



has said, who knows how to put into a home 
that indefinable something whose virtue has 
made the poet say, "The housetop rejoices and 
is glad." 

Unfortunately, however, the wife, as well as 
the husband, is sometimes responsible for the 
unhappiness of the family life and the com- 
plete wreckage of the home. Many a woman 
is so over-particular as a housekeeper, so wor- 
ried about little unimportant details that she 
drives peace and harmony out of the home. 
Serenity, tranquillity of mind, freedom from 
the things which distress and annoy, the 
sense of liberty, restfulness and poise that a 
home should give, are ruled out by her ever- 
lasting nagging, her constant reminders to 
one and another of the family that they have 
dropped an envelope or a piece of paper on 
the floor, that they have brought in mud or 
dust on their boots, that they have turned a 
rug askew, or that somebody's hat or coat has 
been forgotten on a chair. She not only makes 
a slave of herself, but in making everybody 
else toe the mark in accordance with her 
strained ideas of system and order, so discom- 



The Thing That Makes a Home 199 

forts her husband and children that they fail 
to get the things the. real home affords. 

The woman who makes her husband and 
children uncomfortable and herself an irrita- 
ble, nervous wreck, may think she is an effi- 
cient housekeeper, but as a homemaker she is 
an utter failure. More than that, she actually 
loses, or at least lessens, the. love and respect 
of the family she tries so hard in her mistaken 
way to serve. She never succeeds in making 
her family think home as the dearest and 
sweetest place in the world. On the contrary, 
just as soon as the evening meal is over, the 
father and children are anxious to get out of 
it. They constantly find some excuse to run 
away to other people's houses or to some place 
where the atmosphere is of a different nature. 

There can be -no real comfort or happiness 
where there is a constant sense of restraint. 
The home which does not give its members per- 
fect freedom and ease is never a magnet to the 
weary heart, a vision of rest and joy to the 
homesick traveler. 

One of the things that causes so much un- 
happiness in married life and drives love out 
of the home is the effort of a wife or a hus- 



200 Love's Way 



band, arbitrarily, to change the other in some 
point, whether it be in regard to a trivial fault 
or habit, or something of great importance. 

I have known wives to make the mistake of 
trying to make their husbands over by always 
hammering away at their faults, their deficien- 
cies, always reminding them of their weak- 
nesses, instead of praising their strong points, 
lauding their good qualities, and appealing to 
the best in them. Nagging and faultfinding 
have never yet changed anyone, except for 
the worse. You cannot sandpaper a husband 
all the time, scold and criticize him constantly, 
without arousing a fatal protest. 

When a wife is constantly picturing the 
awful results of her husband's drinking habits, 
or other greater or minor vices, and telling 
him what the result will be if he does not 
quit, she arouses in him a spirit of antagonism, 
and completely loses her influence over him. 
Every man resents this sort of treatment. It 
is human nature to defend ourselves when at- 
tacked, to resist being driven or being com- 
pelled to be good. We can only be led to give 
up that which is bad by the substitution of 
something better. 



The Thing That Makes a Home 201 

There is only one way to correct faults in 
men or women and that is by always appeal- 
ing to the best in them. It is a question of the 
expulsive power of a stronger affection. If 
you wish to get a knife or other dangerous 
article away from a child, give him a toy or 
something that he likes better, and of his own 
accord he will drop the thing you don't want 
him to have. But the moment you try to pull 
it away from him, to force him to give it up, 
you arouse the natural antagonism in him and 
he is going to fight you. Men and women are 
only grown up children. 

As a rule, however, men are the chief sin- 
ners in bringing discord into the home, in neg- 
lecting their part in contributing the things 
that make for the family's happiness. 

Although marriage is supposed to be a part- 
nership, the average man cannot seem to get 
the idea out of his head that he has the right 
of proprietorship, that he is really the owner 
and the boss not only of the house but of every, 
one in it, and that he is under no obligation to 
contribute anything to it beyond the material 
things. 

I know a man of this sort, a very able man ? 



202 Love's Way 



who is regarded as a model in his place of 
business and by his associates generally. He 
is even - tempered, cool and self - controlled 
abroad, popular in his club, always generous 
with assistance for any public cause, his name 
being usually one of the first on subscription 
lists of all sorts. In short, he stands very high 
in his community as a public-spirited citizen, 
a model man in all respects. But at home 
there is a very different story. Here he throws 
off all restraint and plays the hog. He thinks 
he is under no obligation to practice self-con- 
trol, to be a gentleman in his home. He evi- 
dently says to himself, "Isn't this my home? 
Didn't my money build it? Doesn't my money 
maintain it? Don't I pay the bills here? Isn't 
everybody here dependent upon me? Why 
should I feel any restraint in my own home? 
Certainly there ought to be one place in the 
world where a man can say what he thinks, 
express his feelings." 

He is a hard worker, and usually comes 
home from business very much used up, often 
pretty nearly a nervous wreck, and he cer- 
tainly takes it out on his family. He will often 
belch forth a volley of scolding just as soon 



The Thing That Makes a Home 203 

as he enters the house. If he sees anything 
out of place, anything broken, anything in- 
jured, he makes it an excuse for his outburst. 
The children get frightened when they see a 
thundercloud on his face, and when he begins 
ranting like a madman they all run away and 
get out of sight. This makes him still more 
furious, and he will often follow them all over 
the house, and call them to account for insult- 
ing him when he is trying to correct them, to 
set them straight. 

This man's wife is a gentle, sensitive woman 
who dreads a scene and will do almost any- 
thing to avoid one. But if a servant happens 
to break a piece of china, or if the cook burns 
the food, if anything lacks the proper flavor, 
or if anything else goes wrong, no matter how 
trifling, he will break out right in the middle 
of a meal, and scold and rave like a maniac. 
In fact he makes a hades of his home, stirs 
everybody in it up, and creates an atmosphere 
that makes peace and happiness impossible. 

There are a great many of these men who 
are gentlemen outside their homes, in their 
places of business, in their clubs, anywhere in 
public, but hogs in the home. Perhaps they 



204 Love's Way 



don't realize that they are cowards and bullies. 
But of course every hog in the home knows 
that his wife and children do not dare to an- 
swer him back or call him to account. He 
knows they are helpless; that they must let 
him rave and abuse until his temper has spent 
itself, and bear it as best they can. Perhaps 
he doesn't know that he arouses their con- 
tempt, and that he cannot hold the affection 
of his family when he treats them in this way. 

The mental attitude of an angry teacher 
will cause a whole schoolroom to vibrate in 
unison with her mood. The same is true of 
the home. One discordant member, by his 
surly or antagonistic attitude, will destroy its 
harmony for a whole evening. I have known 
the peace of an entire household to be broken 
up for the day because the father grew angry 
over something in the morning and got every- 
body so stirred up that harmony was not es- 
tablished even after he left the house. 

The very foundation of our national life, of 
progress, of happiness, of true success is laid 
in the* home. At the bottom of all a man's 
hopes is his dream of wife and child and home. 
No matter what hardships he endures, how 



The Thing That Makes a Home 205 

poor or discouraged he may become, he never 
loses sight of this vision. He sees his ideal 
home in imagination, just as the architect sees 
in his mind's eye, in all its outlines of beauty 
and dignity, a mental picture of the great 
building for which he is making plans. The 
dream of a home of one's own has been the 
sublime incentive of the ages. Men and women 
in all times have made great sacrifices for fame 
and personal power, but what in the whole 
gamut of suffering have they not endured, and 
gladly, for the realization of their dream of a 
home! 

What a pity it is that when the material 
foundation of a home is realized, the dream of 
happiness is so often shattered by the husband 
or wife ! 

One of the chief reasons for this is that so 
many couples fail to realize that, by its very 
nature, marriage is a compromise. If it is to 
endure and to be happy it must always be as 
a willing compromise by both parties to the 
contract. No harmony could ever exist in the 
home on any other basis, for no two people 
were ever made exactly alike, could ever think 
and feel as one on every subject. 



206 Love's Way 



Unhappily, it is not always questions of im- 
portance or grave faults on either side that 
ruin the happiness of husband and wife and 
break up the home or fill it with perpetual dis- 
cord. It is trivial matters, the daily pinpricks, 
the little worries that continually rub one the 
wrong way. A nagging, worrying man or 
woman can destroy the peace of a household 
and make every one in it miserable. Petty 
fault-findings, bickerings, misunderstandings 
about trifles, these are the little foxes which 
frequently destroy the home vines. 

The happiness of the home, the conduct and 
welfare of the children depend on a happy 
marriage. And the happiest marriages are 
those in which husband and wife recognize and 
accept each other's differences, and try to fit 
into one another, as it were. This is really 
the divine plan, for man and woman are the 
complement of each other. 

George Eliot says, "What greater thing is 
there for two human souls than to feel that 
they are joined for life, — to strengthen each 
other in all labor, to rest on each other in all 
sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, 



The Thing That Makes a Home 207 

to be one with each other in silent, unspeak- 
able memories at the last parting?" 

When a man and woman are united in this 
spirit, when they maintain this attitude in all 
their trials and difficulties they will have a 
happy home though it be within the four walls 
of one room or in a dugout on a Western 
prairie. 



XVII 

"STRANGER,, WHY SHOULD I NOT SPEAK 
TO YOU?" 

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and de- 
sire to speak to me, why should you not speak 
to me? And why should I not speak to you?" 
says Walt Whitman. 

This would be love's way. But convention 
steps in and says, "No, you must not speak 
to strangers," and we obey. 

Time and time, again, when I meet our sol- 
diers and sailors on the street, my first impulse 
is to offer them my hand and express my grati- 
tude for the great debt which I personally owe 
them. I know that these boys are giving up 
their vocation, their chosen career, their home, 
those dearer to them than life, to fight for me, 
and it seems coldblooded to pass them with- 
out any sign of recognition. But the iron 
habit of convention too often strangles my 
natural impulse, and I pass them by without 
a word or sign of recognition, or of my feeling 
toward them. I never do so, however, without 

208 



"Why Should I Not Speak to You?" 209 

a deep regret for not speaking, or at least giv- 
ing them a smile, an acknowledgment of my 
appreciation of what they are doing for us all. 

This apparent indifference is one reason 
why a great city like New York, Chicago, or 
San Francisco, to a stranger, especially one 
from a foreign country, is about the lonesom- 
est place a human being could be in. To pass 
thousands of faces day after day, without a 
friendly look from anyone, without a word 
of greeting, without even a smile or a glance 
of recognition, is most disheartening. It 
seems cruel, brutal, uncivilized, yet it does not 
proceed from unkindness, or because people 
don't want to be friendly — it is just the 
custom. 

But why should we. of the twentieth cen- 
tury perpetuate such a custom? Why should 
strangers stare so coldly at one another when 
a simple smile and pleasant recognition would 
be so pleasant ? These people we call strangers 
are really our brothers and sisters, for the hu- 
man family are all children of one Father. We 
have not had an opportunity to know the so- 
called strangers simply because our family is 
so vast. 



210 Love's Way 



There is something inhuman, unnatural, in 
the idea that we cannot speak to anyone until 
we have been formally introduced. Meeting 
strangers ought to be something like a brother 
or a sister going back to the old home after 
many years of absence and finding new broth- 
ers and sisters who were not there when they 
went away. Many of the people we don't 
know in the conventional way may be more 
akin to us in tastes and ideals than some of the 
members of our own family. I very often 
meet people whose faces tell me that they are 
not only brothers and sisters because we be- 
long to the same great human family, but be- 
cause we are sympathetically related — related 
by our mental affinity. My heart goes out to 
them spontaneously. I long to stop and tell 
them that I want to know them. Something 
in their faces attracts me. I can read there a 
history which interests me wonderfully. I 
know there is something there for me, and if 
so there must be something in me which would 
interest and perhaps help them. They not 
only have a kindly expression, but they often 
look as though they knew what I was thinking 



Why Should I Not Speak to You?" 211 



and really felt sorry that custom forbade oui 
speaking to each other. 

Some will object that the custom of speak- 
ing to strangers, regardless of whether we 
know anything about them, would lead to all 
sorts of unfortunate results, especially for 
girls. And I answer that it does not do so 
where it is practised in the South; and it would 
not do so in large cities if it were made the 
general custom. A pleasant recognition, a 
smile or a friendly greeting, does not, of 
course, mean that we go off with strangers, or 
that girls would allow themselves to be led 
astray by strange men. 

During my first visit to a Southern town, 
after living in New York many years, I was 
much pleased and surprised at the cordiality 
of people, even to strangers on the street. The 
first time I passed through the streets, many 
people whom I had never seen before bowed 
politely to me, and the colored men would 
raise their hats. The whole atmosphere of cor- 
diality, of friendliness, was such a contrast to 
the cold atmosphere of New York that it made 
a lasting impression on me. Ever since I have 



212 Love's Way 



really thought I would like to live in this little 
Southern city — Staunton, Va. 

The American and English people particu- 
larly are cold and stony when coming in con- 
tact with strangers. I have sat down at a 
table in a hotel or restaurant opposite English- 
speaking people who made me feel that I was 
intruding. They seemed to wish that I would 
get out of their way, that it was a piece of 
impudence on my part to sit down at the same 
table with them. 

On the other hand, when traveling in some 
Continental countries, especially in France, if 
we enter a restaurant and sit down, those sit- 
ting opposite us at the table, or perhaps at 
tables nearby, smile politely and thus make us 
feel at home. Some of the brightest experi- 
ences of my life have come from traveling 
in strange lands and meeting strangers who 
could not even speak my language, but who 
would give me such a friendly greeting in their 
facial expression as to make me feel that we 
were real friends. 

How different it is in our country! New 
York men tell me that they have passed men 
nearly every day for years, without ever speak- 



"Why Should I Not Speak to You?" 213 

ing to them or showing any sign whatever of 
recognition. This doesn't seem human. If we 
are brothers and sisters to the strangers we 
meet on the street why should we pass them 
with a cold stare? It seems that we could at 
least give them a smile, at least show them that 
we recognize the relationship of our human 
brotherhood. 

Elbert Hubbard says that "the world has 
always been run on a short allowance of love." 
Yet, if we will, we can give it in unlimited 
quantity; and just in the same measure that 
we give will it come back to us. Even if we 
don't speak to strangers we can look at them 
in a way that will make them realize our kin- 
ship. And we never can tell how much good 
a friendly look, or a cheery smile will do. I 
know an old lady who has such a sweet benign 
expression, a half smile on her face which 
seems to say "I would like to speak to you if 
I only knew you," that the elevator boys, the 
conductors on the cars, the newsboys, the 
clerks — everybody who comes in contact with 
her feels that he has received a real benediction 
for the rest of the day. 

We are all debtors on occasion to perfect 



214 Love's Way 



strangers for some silent message of sympathy 
which helped us on our way — smiles, encour- 
aging appreciative looks, kindly acts, a radia- 
tion of love that made us conscious of their 
sympathy and kinship. I meet one of these 
kindly strangers almost every day in the 
streets of New York, a man who reflects so 
much love and good cheer in his face, that, al- 
though he doesn't speak, he makes me feel that 
he would like to, that only custom, not inclina- 
tion, keeps him from doing so. 

Dickens says "no one is useless in the world 
who lightens the burden of it for anyone else." 
The man or woman who has a kindly feeling 
for everyone is a universal helper. Most of us 
very much overestimate the possibilities of 
money to help. What people want most of all 
is sympathy, the touch of brotherhood. This is 
what inspires, encourages, uplifts. It fills a 
need that money cannot touch. A church in- 
vestigator tells how fully he realized this when 
calling on a poor old soul whom he found on a 
pallet of straw in an attic. When he asked her 
what she needed most he thought she would 
say "Bread, coal, covering," for she lacked all 



"Why Should I Not Speak to You?" 215 

of these. But no, her answer was "Folks. 
Someone to talk to me. I am lonely!" 

How many lonely souls there are longing 
for sympathy, the solace of human companion- 
ship, which no material things can supply! 
Everywhere we see people starving for love, 
famishing for affection, for someone to appre- 
ciate them. We see men and women possess- 
ing material comfort, luxury, all that can con- 
tribute to their physical well-being — they are 
able to gratify almost any wish — and yet they 
are hungry for love. They seem to have 
plenty of everything but affection. 

There are rich women who would give all 
their wealth for the love of a good, clean man, 
or of a little child. And there are millionaires 
whose lives are barren because there is no love 
in them. Everywhere we see the love-starved 
expression in the faces of all sorts and condi- 
tions of people. Many of them are rich in 
lands and houses, automobiles, yachts, horses, 
money — in everything but love! 

Children should be reared to think that we 
are all related one to another, that human be- 
ings are the same family, because they have the 
same Father-Mother- God, and that because 



216 Love's Way 



they do not happen to have been introduced 
to each other is no reason why they should 
not speak. 

When we do this, men and women will not, 
as they do now, coldly pass people by who look 
as though they were really longing for friend- 
ship, famishing for sympathy, for love which 
many would gladly give them if there were no 
social ban upon recognizing or speaking to 
strangers. 

There is a fruitful suggestion for helping 
others, no matter how poor we may be, in the 
thought that the spirit of kindness, of good- 
will, is a great radiating force that reaches out 
to other souls and gives them strength and up- 
lift, though we may not even speak to them. 

"Certainly in our own little sphere it is not 
the most active people to whom we owe the 
most," says Phillips Brooks. "Among the 
common people whom we know it is not neces- 
sarily those who are busiest, not those who, 
meteorlike, are ever on the rush after some 
visible charge and work. It is the lives, like 
the stars which simply pour down on us the 
calm light of their bright and faithful being, 
up to which we look and out of which we 



"Why Should I Not Speak to You?" 217 

gather the deepest calm and courage. It 
seems to me that there is reassurance here for 
many of us who seem to have no chance for 
active usefulness. We can do nothing for our 
fellow-men. But still it is good to know that 
we can be something for them; to know (and 
this we may know surely) that no man or 
woman of the humblest sort can really be 
strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the 
world's being better for it; without somebody 
being helped and comforted by the very exist- 
ence of that goodness." 

The loving thought, the good will attitude 
toward all reacts on ourselves. It is a great 
friend maker. If we cultivate a cheerful, cor- 
dial manner toward everybody, we make ac- 
quaintances and friends easily. 

I know a woman who is a dwarf and a crip- 
ple, but .who has such a sweet, open, beautiful 
nature that everybody loves her. She is wel- 
come everywhere, because she is interested in 
everyone. She is poor, .but she enters into 
other lives with a heartiness, an unselfish 
abandonment and enthusiasm that ought to 
shame those of us who are physically normal 
and in better circumstances. 



218 Love's Way 



There is no one so poor or so helpless that 
he cannot hold a helpful and encouraging men- 
tal attitude toward others, who cannot give 
of his sympathy to the lonely soul who is 
hungering for human companionship. We 
can all cherish the aspiration of George Eliot, 
and say with her : 

"May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused 
And in diffusion ever more intense ! 
So shall I join the choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 



XVIII 

"i SERVE THE STRONGEST" 

As love pours out in service, God pours in 
And, lo, to us comes spaciousness of soul. 

Hugh Anthony Allen. 

An old world legend tells of a powerful 
giant whose motto was "I serve the strongest." 
At first he served the mayor of his town, until 
he discovered that the mayor was under a duke 
who was far more powerful than he. There- 
upon he left the mayor to serve the duke, 
until he found that the latter had to obey one 
greater than any duke, the emperor. Then 
he transferred his allegiance to the emperor, 
whom he served until one day he heard him 
say that he was afraid of the devil. 

"What! you afraid of the devil!" cried the 
giant. "Is the emperor afraid of anything? 
Is there anyone stronger than the emperor? 
If so, I will serve him." 

Leaving the emperor, he hunted for the 
devil, whom he found and served. But he 
soon learned that the devil was afraid of some- 

219 



220 Love's Way 



one more powerful than himself, — the Christ. 

For a long time he sought the Christ. One 
day, while still seeking, in a deep wood he met 
an old man who told him to serve his fellow- 
men, and that in this way he would serve the 
strongest power there was. 

Following the old man's advice, the giant 
began to ferry people across a river that flowed 
close by the cabin in which he lived. This river 
was very treacherous, and in its dangerous 
waters many people had lost their lives. 

One stormy night the giant heard a rap on 
his cabin door. Opening it he found a little 
girl, who wanted to get across the river. The 
giant told her it was the time of the Spring 
floods, and that if he attempted to cross his 
boat would be swamped and she would be 
killed by the sharp floating ice with which the 
river was almost covered. But the child in- 
sisted she must get across that night, and that 
if he would not row her to the other side she 
must go alone. 

The giant lighted his lantern and together 
he and the child got into his boat and pushed 
out into the swirling waters. The wind soon 
blew out the lantern, and they were in utter 



"I Serve the Strongest" 221 

darkness, in the midst of the swollen, ice- 
blocked current. Exerting his superhuman 
strength the giant succeeded in getting the 
boat across the river, but he was so exhausted 
when they landed that he sank on the sand un- 
conscious. When he came to himself the child 
had disappeared, but a man stood bending 
over him, a man whose face bore the image of 
the child, and in which was a light never seen 
in any mortal face- And the man spoke, and 
said to the giant that, inasmuch as he had done 
great service to the humblest, he had also done 
it to his Master — the Christ. 

Very similar to -this old legend is Tolstoy's 
beautiful story of the peasant who longed to 
see the Christ. 

A devout Russian peasant, according to the 
story, had prayed for years that the Master 
might sometime visit his humble home. One 
night he dreamed that the Master would come 
to him the next day. And so real seemed his 
dream that when the peasant awoke in the 
morning he arose and immediately went to 
work putting his cabin to rights and preparing 
for the expected heavenly guest. 

A violent storm of sleet and snow raged 



222 Love's Way 



during the day, but the man performed his 
usual household tasks, and while preparing his 
pot of cabbage soup, the Russian peasant's 
daily dish, he would look out into the storm 
with expectant eyes. 

Presently he saw a poor pedler, with a 
pack on his back, struggling forward against 
the fierce icy blasts that almost overwhelmed 
him. The kind-hearted peasant rushed out 
and brought the wayfarer into his cabin. He 
dried his clothing, shared his cabbage soup 
with him, and started him on his way again 
warmed and comforted. 

Looking out again he saw another traveler, 
an old woman, trying feebly to hold on her 
way against the blinding storm. Her also 
he took into his cabin, warmed and fed her, 
wrapped his own coat about her, and, strength- 
ened and encouraged, sent her rejoicing on her 
way. 

Darkness began to fall, but still no sign of 
the Master. Hoping against hope the man 
once more went to his cabin door, and looking 
out into the night he saw a little child, who was 
utterly unable to make its way against the 
blinding sleet and snow. Going out he took 



"I Serve the Strongest" 223 

the half-frozen child in his arms, brought it 
into the cabin, warmed and fed it, and soon 
the little wayfarer fell asleep before the fire. 

Bitterly disappointed at the Master's non- 
appearance, the peasant sat gazing into the 
fire, and as he gazed he fell asleep. Suddenly 
the room was radiant with a light that did 
not come from the fire, and there stood the 
Master, white-robed, and serene, looking upon 
him with a smile. "Ah, Master, I have waited 
and watched all this long day, but thou did'st 
not come." The Master replied, "Three times 
have I visited thy cabin to-day. The poor 
pedler whom thou rescued, warmed and fed, 
that was I; the poor woman to whom thou 
gavest thy coat, that was I ; and this little child 
whom thou hast saved from the tempest, that 
is I. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
least of these, you have done it unto me." 

Someone says, "The greatest thing a man 
can do for his heavenly Father is to be kind 
to some of his other children." Whenever we 
do a kindness to another we are literally obey- 
ing Christ's command to his disciples : "A new 
commandment give I unto you, that ye love 
one another; as I have loved you love ye also 



224 Love's Way 



one another." In love and service to one an- 
other lies the salvation of the world. 

"I serve the strongest," would make a splen- 
did life motto. For to serve the strongest is 
to serve God, which consists in helping the 
weakest, — all those who need our help. 

Many of us do not realize the great value 
and importance of even the most trifling serv- 
ice unselfishly rendered a fellow being. We 
do not realize that the habit of kindness, of 
unselfishly serving another whenever we can, 
will not only benefit those we serve, but it will 
help ourselves even more. It will make our 
own lives richer, fuller, stronger, than the lives 
of the self-centered ever can be. 

I recall a man whose life is a good illustra- 
tion of this. He has hosts of friends and 
everybody loves him for his genial, helpful 
ways. He believes that every helpful sugges- 
tion and every uplifting thought implanted in 
the mind of youth are seeds sown in promising 
soil and that every time he meets a boy or girl 
he must sow some of this seed. He has made it 
a life rule to try to inspire, to encourage every 
young person he meets. 

If it be a youth with a deficient education, 



"I Serve the Strongest" 225 

he encourages him along the lines of self -im- 
provement, tells him how he can make the most 
of. his time. If one who lacks* ambition, he 
tries to arouse it, to light his mind with a 
glimpse of his possibilities. If he finds a round 
peg anywhere in a square hole, he urges him 
to get out of it, to find his niche. In other 
words, he tries to give everybody a lift as he 
goes along life's way, and no one will ever 
know how many lives he has influenced for 
good. 

Some people are always helping someone, 
somewhere. Wherever they go sunshine and 
encouragement follow in their wake. The 
downcast are cheered, the suffering are re- 
lieved and comforted. 

During the battle of Fredericksburg, hun- 
dreds of Union soldiers who were wounded on 
the battlefield lay there all day and all night 
suffering frightfully from thirst as well as the 
pain from their wounds. Their agonizing cries 
for water were answered only by the roar of 
the cruel guns. A young Southern soldier, 
however, was so touched by those piteous cries 
that he begged his general to allow him to carry 
water to the suffering soldiers. The general 



226 Love's Way 



warned him that it would mean death if he ap- 
peared on the battlefield at that time on such 
an errand. But the youth put no value on his 
life, and out he went amid shot and shell with 
his pail of water, going from soldier to soldier, 
straightening cramped and mangled limbs, 
putting knapsacks under the heads of suffer- 
ers, spreading cloaks and blankets over them, 
just as though they had been his own com- 
rades. The soldiers of both armies watched 
the youth as he performed his work of mercy, 
and they were so touched by the divine cour- 
age that heeded not the guns, the roar of the 
cannon, or the bursting shells all about him, 
that they ceased firing at each other. For an 
hour and a half there was a virtual truce while 
the boy in gray went over the entire battlefield 
upon his errand of love, giving drink to the 
thirsty, and comfort to the mangled and the 
dying. Was there a more beautiful incident 
than this in the Civil War? 

Love has no fear because it is unmindful of 
self. It thinks only of the welfare of others, 
of relieving suffering wherever it sees it. Its 
physical courage in exposing itself to personal 



"I Serve the Strongest" 227 

harm is only equaled by its moral courage in 
braving comment or criticism. 

A Boston lady, while doing her Christmas 
shopping, noticed on the street, collecting con- 
tributions for the poor, a Salvation Army girl 
who looked very cold and tired. The lady 
asked her if she would not like to rest and have 
something to eat. The girl said she was very 
hungry and tired, but that she could not leave 
her post. Whereupon the lady offered to take 
the girl's pole standard and pot, and sent her 
away to a restaurant for a warm dinner and 
rest. The curious passing crowd stopped to 
look at the well-dressed woman with handsome 
furs ringing the bell by the Salvation Army 
contribution pot. And guessing the object of 
her presence there, they began to put in their 
nickels and dimes, and many a dollar bill also 
went into the pot. Friends and acquaintances 
of the temporary collector passed while she 
stood there, and, knowing her kindly heart, 
added their contributions, so that the pot held 
a goodly sum that night. 

A spectator remarked that not one woman 
in a thousand would have done that. But why 
not? Why shouldn't we all do such things? 



228 Love's Way 



The most beautiful thing in the world is spon- 
taneous service, kindly acts of love and service 
to one another. "I wonder," says someone, 
"why it is that we are not all kinder than we 
are? How much the world needs it. How 
easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. 
How infallibly it is remembered. How super- 
abundantly it pays itself back — for there is no 
debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly 
honorable, as love. 'Love never faileth.' Love 
is success, love is happiness, love is life." 

Happiness has been defined as "great love 
and much service." It is certain that no efforts 
we may ever make can bring such splendid 
returns as the endeavor to scatter the flowers 
of love and service as we go along, to plant 
roses instead of thorns ; no investment will pay 
such rich dividends as kind words and kindly 
acts, the effort to radiate a loving spirit toward 
every living creature. 

There are some great-hearted souls who are 
always giving out of their best without any 
thought of getting a return. They are always 
unconsciously serving the strongest. 

I have read of one of these, a poor man who 
dreamed one night that he went to Paradise, 



"I Serve the Strongest" 229 

and who was so surprised to find himself there 
that he began to apologize profusely for his 
intrusion. He said he knew he was out of 
place, that he had no business there, because 
he had never during his life earned anything 
so glorious, and that, in fact, it was a presump- 
tion on his part even to look within the gates 
of Paradise. 

He pleaded his inability to do anything to 
win him such a great favor, protesting that he 
was a very poor man, just an ordinary, every- 
day workman, who had no standing in society 
on the earth. He had tried to live honestly, he 
said, to do his work faithfully, to bring up 
his children as they should be brought up, and 
to be kind to his neighbors, but as to any right 
to enter Paradise, he could not understand how 
he had presumed to do such a thing. 

But the angel at the gate said to him: "My 
friend, do not depreciate yourself. Do you 
not remember how you saved a poor woman's 
home when it took nearly the last dollar you 
had in the savings bank? Nor how you helped 
a poor orphan child who had no home when 
you could scarcely take care of your own chil- 
dren? Nor, again, how you befriended many 



230 Love's Way 



poor people even before you had a home of 
your own, and. continually made sacrifices of 
your own comfort, in order to give of your 
necessities to help others?" 

"These and many other things like them," 
added the angel, "are what brought you here. 
You came because you had a right to ; you be- 
long here." 

"But," still protested the embarrassed, man, 
"I never founded colleges, or hospitals, or gave 
money to charitable institutions, as Mr. Blank, 
the man for whom I worked, did." 

"Ah," said the angel, "it is not these things 
which the rich and powerful give out of their 
abundance that gain entrance here; it is the 
little nameless acts of kindness and love, the 
self-sacrificing service performed in the com- 
mon ordinary situations in life; it is the love 
that gives itself, the spirit of unselfishness, that 
opens the gates of Paradise to mortals." 

Marcus Aurelius said that the more we love 
the nearer we are to God. Of course, he meant 
love in the highest, the truest, and the purest 
sense. 

When we love thus, and are the most just, 
the most honest, the purest and cleanest we 



"I Serve the Strongest" 231 

know how to be, we are the nearest to 
divinity. Such love puts us in touch with 
the best. It allies us with all that is beautiful, 
noble, highest, and most unselfish; with the 
loftiest sentiments, the highest principles, all 
that is finest in life. It is the golden key which 
gives us access to the holy of holies. This love 
is, indeed, the connecting link between man 
and his God. 



XIX 

THE DAILY ORIENTATION 

"Eventually it will be possible to tele- 
phone completely around the globe. You may 
sit in one booth and speak into a receiver, while 
another man sits in the next booth and waits 
for your words. 

' 'Your voice will go to San Francisco, say, 
by wire. It will leap the Pacific through the 
air and be returned to another wire. It will 
cross Europe by wire, then span the Atlantic 
through the ether and return to another wire 
here in New York, which will lead it to your 
friend a few feet away." 

This prediction by the wireless expert, Ban- 
croft Gherardi, engineer of the American 
Telephone and Telegraph Company's New 
York plant, amazing as it is, will, without 
doubt, be fulfilled when the world war is over. 

How will this be accomplished? On pre- 
cisely the same principle as the voice is carried 
by telephone to the next room to us or only a 
few miles away. 

232 



The Daily Orientation 233 

When we talk by telephone to people at a 
distance our voices are not transmitted over 
the wire as sound, without the aid of any other 
medium. The human voice merely sets in mo- 
tion a series of vibrations which cause it to be 
exactly reproduced at the other end of the 
wire. No sound whatever passes over the wire, 
yet you hear the voice of the person to whom 
you are speaking almost as distinctly as though 
you were both in the same room. 

The vibrations set in motion by the voice 
causes the particles in the wire to start vibra- 
tions into the ether which the wire directs and 
protects from being lost, but wireless telegra- 
phy has shown us that these vibrations are not 
dependent upon wire. These are ethereal vi- 
brations. 

We are only beginning to realize that, in a 
similar way, our thoughts start vibrations 
which are transmitted to our friends, and also 
to our enemies or those antagonistic to us. We 
have all had experience in receiving from dear 
ones love vibrations which have been transmit- 
ted to us through space. We have also re- 
ceived, felt flowing in on us, discordant vibra- 



234 Love's Way 



tions which originated in the hatred, the envy, 
or the jealousy of others. 

Through wireless connection, scientists on 
land can explode a torpedo away out at sea. 
So we can send our thoughts, good thoughts 
or vicious thoughts, out into the universal ether 
to bless or curse both ourselves and others. 
Although they may be far away from us, we 
can make other people very miserable, or we 
can make them happy. We, in turn, unless 
very firmly centered in God — rendered im- 
mune by Divine Love — are seriously affected 
by other minds. 

We live in the midst of all sorts of currents 
and cross-currents of other people's thoughts, 
and every time we fear, or worry, or doubt, or 
hate, we make connection with the currents 
of the fears, the worries, the doubts, the ha- 
treds of others, which then flow in upon us 
and add to our misery. 

On the other hand, when our thought con- 
nects us with the love current; when we send 
out vibrations of courage, of faith, of love, we 
are reinforced by similar vibrations flowing in 
on us from every side. 

Vibration is inseparable from life. Almost 



The Daily Orientation 235 

everything in life can be accounted for by its 
rate of vibration. For example, all shades of 
color are due to different rates of vibration of 
the ether upon our optic nerve. Without this 
vibration there would be no such thing as color. 
The same thing is true of sound. Musical 
sounds, all sounds of every kind, are due to 
different rates of vibration which impinge upon 
the auditory nerve, each rate of vibration 
arousing a different sensation in the brain. 

Every atom in the universe is in a vibratory 
state, is forever revolving around some center. 
The moon revolves around the earth, the earth 
revolves around the sun at an inconceivable 
speed, and the sun is whirling around an in- 
finitely greater orbit at a speed which staggers 
the imagination, while every atom and every 
electron in all these bodies is revolving around 
its own little individual center. 

The sun's heat, which sustains our earth life, 
is simply vibration. It would be absurd to 
suppose that the sun could transmit heat nine- 
ty-three millions of miles. What we call heat 
is a form of energy vibration. The sun gives 
the initial impulse, no one knows how, to some 



236 Love's Way 



sort of energy which is transmitted to the earth 
by vibration. 

Every life is vibratory movement, and the 
quality of our lives is determined by the qual- 
ity and the rate of our vibrations. Harmoni- 
ous vibrations mean health, happiness, effi- 
ciency, success. Discordant vibrations mean 
strangulation, discord, thwarted ambition, a 
wrecked career. 

If we live in the midst of discordant vibra- 
tions which are antagonistic to one another, life 
will be whittled away at a terrific rate. If, on 
the other hand, we keep ourselves in tune with 
the infinite harmonies, we shall preserve the 
harmonious action of our brain, our nerves, our 
mental and physical being, and this harmony 
will heal, will increase our power, our success, 
and our happiness. 

We are consciously or unconsciously con- 
tinually being acted upon by vibrations from 
within and without. Every person we meet, 
everything we hear or read, our environment, 
every act, every hidden motive, every thought, 
every mood, every emotion, starts vibrations 
which play through the billions of cells in our 
body, and the influence exactly corresponds to 



The Daily Orientation 237 

the quality of the impetus which set up the 
vibration. 

How little we realize that every bit of pas- 
sion, every excited state of mind, every dis- 
couraged or despondent thought, all vibrations 
of anger, hatred, revenge, jealousy, avarice, or 
any sort of meanness, will be recorded with 
scientific accuracy not only in the warp and 
woof of our character, but also in the fiber of 
our physical being. Similarly, if you send a 
current of hope, of love, of joy, of generosity, 
of nobility, down through the nervous system, 
it will never stop until it has set every cell in 
your body into the same sort of vibration, 
stamping hope and joy and generosity and no- 
bleness on every tissue of the body and every 
faculty of the mind. Every nerve, every atom 
in your body will take on the character and the 
quality of the thought, motive or mood which 
set it in motion. 

How many incipient diseases and disease 
tendencies are started in the different organs 
of the body by vicious vibrations which have 
been set in motion by the wireless mental or- 
ganization ! 

Vibrations started by your tubercular fears, 



238 Love's Way 



by your cancer horror, by your fear of any 
disease, will reproduce themselves in the tis- 
sues of your system. 

It is well known that pessimists are never in 
as good health as optimists. Pessimistic vibra- 
tions are destroyers. Your fear thought of 
disease sets in motion discordant vibrations 
which correspond with your thought. Hope 
and expectancy start constructive vibrations, 
while fear and doubt start destructive vibra- 
tions. Harmonious vibrations are always 
building for harmony and wholesomeness ; the 
discordant vibrations for just the opposite. 

Every human being makes his own world by 
his thoughts. The vibrations we start deter- 
mine what sort of a world it shall be. Two 
people who belong to the same family, live 
under the same roof, under the same influences, 
may be farther apart than the poles of the 
earth. No two people in the same environ- 
ment live in the same world, because their 
thoughts, their motives, their emotions, their 
acts, connect them with their affinity currents. 
One of them may live in the current of reality, 
truth, love and helpfulness, while the other 
may live in the vilest current of thought, be- 



The Daily Orientation 239 

cause his own thinking connects him with other 
minds on this same plane. 

Similarly, a coarse, sensual mind is con- 
stantly making connections with like minds un- 
til thought currents make an irresistible force 
to drag him down to lower and lower depths. 

A community is often shocked at the rapid- 
ity with which a wayward girl — a girl who has 
been well reared — goes to her utter ruin. It 
doesn't seem possible that any human being 
who had had any kind of moral training could 
deteriorate so rapidly as some girls do when 
fchey begin to go wrong. The reason is, they 
begin to make mental connection with those 
who are steeped in vileness. In other words, 
their own little diverted thought stream is re- 
inforced by the great current of impurity with 
which they make wireless connection. 

In a similar way, the youth who begins to 
fall away from right standards by dwelling 
upon the criminal thought, the criminal act, 
contemplating these things, makes connections 
with the criminal thought currents, and before 
he realizes it he is swept off his feet and com- 
mits a crime. Then he becomes one of the 
criminal class. 



240 Love's Way 



We are in the habit of thinking of ourselves 
as alone, as individual units, but we are really 
connected with all other minds which have the 
same rate of vibration as ours. We form part 
of an unseen, vibrating current, and we are 
constantly increasing the strength of this wire- 
less current by making connections with who- 
ever or whatever has the same mental or moral 
vibration with ourselves. 

When we are in tune with the Infinite we 
feel tremendously reinforced by the mighty 
momentum of all that is good and pure and 
clean and true. We feel sustained, buttressed 
and supported, because we are in wireless con- 
nection with everything that is like God; that 
is, we are in tune with Him. But when we 
make a wireless connection with the devil or 
whatever typifies evil, we relate ourselves to 
all the forces of evil, we are in a downward cur- 
rent that every moment gathers momentum to 
drag us down. 

What a wonderful help it would be in our 
educational training and character building if 
the invisible currents, radiating from other 
minds with which we make connection, could 
be made visible, like a panorama or picture, 



The Daily Orientation 241 

before our eyes! How mortified some of us 
would be if we could see in picture form the 
miserable, ugly, vile currents with which we 
make connections ! Seen openly, how repulsive 
they would be to us ! But because they are in- 
visible and others cannot see the vile guests 
which we harbor in our minds, we do not try 
to keep them out. If everybody we meet could 
see what the mental currents which we invite, 
because we are in tune with them, bring into 
our minds; if we could see, and others could 
see, the kind of people with whom we make 
wireless connection because of our thought af- 
finity, most of us would shudder at the shock. 

One of the greatest problems in wireless 
telegraphy is the shutting out of conflicting 
currents, making the instrument immune to 
everything which doesn't vibrate with the mes- 
sage which the operator wishes to receive. 

Our problem also is to shut out conflicting 
currents, and to keep our human instrument 
in tune with the message we wish to receive. 
If the wireless operator's instrument were left 
open to conflicting currents, he would not get 
the SOS message from the ship in distress. 
So we, if we would get, clear and distinct, the 



242 Love's Way 



message the Creator intends for us, must make 
ourselves immune to all of the conflicting cur- 
rents which are constantly bombarding our 
mentality. We must shut out the vicious cur- 
rents, the worry currents, the jealous currents, 
the selfish, the fear currents, the hatred and 
revenge currents. If we want to receive the 
divine message, the love thought currents, 
vibrations that will build, that will inspire, 
that will encourage, vibrations which will help 
us to achieve the things worth while, which, 
will enable us to be what we long to be, we 
must shut out all thoughts, all vibrations that 
tear down, that blacken and defile the mind, 
that weaken and handicap both mind and 
body. 

What sort of vibrations are you now sending 
out — harmonious or discordant? Are you 
sending out hate vibrations; lustful, sensual 
vibrations; selfish, greed vibrations; envious, 
jealous vibrations; or are you radiating an at- 
mosphere of hope, joy, and gladness? Are 
you radiating sunshine or black shadows ? Are 
you sending out harmonious and happy vibra- 
tions, vibrations of expectancy of better things, 
vibrations of encouragement, or are you send- 



The Daily Orientation 243 

ing out vibrations which will arouse discord, 
pain, doubt, fear and worry? 

Remember that whatever you send out will 
come back to you in kind. If you are not 
attuned to the highest and the best in you; if 
your wireless instrument is attuned instead to 
discord, you will take off all of the discordant 
cross-currents that are floating in the bound- 
less sea of thought. You will thus blacken 
and cripple other lives as well as your own, 
for since every thought vibration makes wire- 
less connection with others like itself, your 
vibration goes on repeating itself, and never 
ceases until it has visited and affected num- 
berless other minds. 

No man lives to himself alone. We cannot 
even think without affecting others, either for 
good or ill. How important it is, then, to start 
only vibrations which will have a beneficent 
influence. 

Everyone can direct and control his thought 
currents. He can send out and draw to him- 
self whatever manner of thought he wills. No 
one is at the mercy of his thought. No one 
need be a victim of the distressing, discour- 
aging thought currents and cross-currents 



244 Love's Way 



which are flying in every direction from other 
minds. 

If you will, you can get yourself in tune 
with your Infinite Source; in tune with truth, 
with beauty, with love, with helpfulness, with 
kindness, in tune with everything that is un- 
selfish, uplifting, clean and true. You can, 
if you will, learn to cut out all harmful vibra- 
tions, all destructive, conflicting thoughts and 
imaginings, and make yourself immune to 
them. 

In other words, it is possible for all who 
will take the trouble to get in tune with the 
highest thing in them to live in life's paradise 
instead of its hades most of the time, as so 
many of us do. 

The churches use sacred music as a sort of 
tuning-up process for worshipers, to prepare 
the mind for sacred things, sensitizing it so 
that it may be more impressionable, more sen- 
sitive to the lessons from the pulpit. When 
the soul is wrought up with music there is a 
wireless connection between it and its Author 
■ — the; great Author of harmony and rhythmi- 
cal laws — the Author of all law, of all creation. 

If the worshipers who throng the churches 



The Daily Orientation 245 

on Sundays would keep their minds tuned 
throughout the week to the same harmonious 
key on which the sacred music starts them at 
the Sunday morning service, what a happy 
place this world would *be ! Whether we go to 
church or not, if each of us would resolve every 
morning that every thought, every emotion, 
every motive, every mental attitude for the 
day should be wholesome, helpful, uplifting, 
what a wonderful revolution it would make in 
our lives! 

Living as a fine art is really living in har- 
mony with ourselves and with others. It con- 
sists largely in- keeping one's nature in tune 
with eternal Principle, in tune with Infinite 
Love. Here is where our strength lies — in .our 
conscious union with our Source. This is the 
secret of all power, poise and harmony. 

When we bring our personal vibration, our 
mental atmosphere, into harmony with our 
higher self, when our vibrations are in tune 
with the Infinite, so that we feel one with the 
One, we shall take on infinite power; we shall 
feel the thrill of divine energy flowing through 
every atom of our being. 

How shall we do this? By getting the right 



246 Love's Way 



keynote for the day the first thing when we 
awake in the morning. 

You know how a singer gets his keynote. 
He uses a tuning-fork or strikes a key on an 
organ or piano in order to key the voice and 
the instrument to the right keynote, so that 
their vibrations will harmonize, instead of con- 
flicting with each other and making discord. 

Now, in a similar way, when we wish to get 
our minds in tune with the Infinite Instru- 
ment, we must use certain mental tuning-forks 
which will tend to give like vibrations, vibra- 
tions that will harmonize. 

The greatest of these tuning-forks is love. 
No other will so quickly bring the vibrations 
of the human heart into unison with the In- 
finite's pulsations. Love keys the mind to 
peace, poise, truth, beauty, purity, unselfish- 
ness, honesty, justice — all that harmonizes with 
divine principles. 

The heart attuned to love, filled to overflow- 
ing with love of God and man, has no room 
for bitterness, malice, pettiness or meanness 
of any sort. Where the love thought is domi- 
nant, there are no discordant vibrations. It 
would be impossible, because love is the su- 



The Daily Orientation 247 

preme harmonizer, the great peacemaker. The 
love vibrations are healing balm for all that 
blights happiness or produces discontent. They 
neutralize all selfishness, envy, jealousy, ha- 
tred, all of the brutal, baser passions and pro- 
pensities. 

When we open our minds to the inflow of 
divine love, we will have no difficulty in keep- 
ing our minds in harmony with the best thing 
in us. Then we are in tune with the Infinite 
and make connections with all the peaceful, 
happy currents from other peaceful, happy 
minds, and so multiply our strength and effi- 
ciency. For harmony is strength and effi- 
ciency. 

Eastern philosophers have a beautiful cus- 
tom which they call orienting themselves. 
When they rise in the morning they turn their 
faces toward the sun, raise their thoughts to 
the Supreme Being, and open every avenue 
of their minds to the beauty of love, of truth, 
and of all the divine influences. 

At the very moment of waking they shut 
out from their minds every sordid thought, 
every selfish thought, everything that would 
conflict with their orientation. Nothing is suf- 



48 Love's Way 



f ered to clog the mental and spiritual avenues, 
and they get the full benefit of the flood of 
divine influences which flow in upon them. 

In this way they prepare themselves for the 
day, put themselves in tune for the daily rou- 
tine, the particular spiritual work, the spiritual 
contemplation or meditation which follows the 
"orientation," and for all the life of the day. 

Here is an excellent suggestion for finding 
the keynote of your day. When you get up 
in the morning turn your face toward the sun. 
Imagine it as a symbol of divine love. Think 
of the sun as one of the great marvels of the 
Creator, given you to bring light, health, joy 
and beauty into your life. Breathe deeply 
and take in deep draughts of beauty, of love, 
and of truth. Make this a daily habit and you 
will be surprised to see how the beauty of it 
will grow on you, and how quickly this daily 
uplifting of your spirit will tend to purify and 
refreshen, renew and recreate your whole 
nature. 

You may adopt any method you choose of 
directing and controlling your mental vibra- 
tions. But once you acquire the habit of get- 
ting your wireless instrument in tune daily to 



The Daily Orientation 249 

receive the vibrations of Divine Love, the vi- 
brations that help, encourage, uplift, your body 
will grow stronger, your mind will expand, 
and your whole life will blossom out into 
beauty and power. 



XX 

SCATTER YOUR FLOWERS AS YOU GO 

There is nothing else quite so pathetic as 
the post-mortem kindness so often manifested 
by people who thought they had no time to 
be kind to their loved ones while they were 
living. 

Many a man has piled more flowers on the 
coffin of wife or mother than he ever gave her 
during her lifetime. I have known men who, 
because of a sense of remorse, spent more 
money on their mother's funeral than they 
spent on all the presents they ever gave her 
while she was living. 

The Youth's Companion tells of a young 
girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirits and vigor 
who was married and had four children. Later, 
the husband died penniless and the mother 
made the most heroic efforts to educate her 
children. She taught school, sewed, painted, 
did all sorts of things to earn money to send 
the girls to boarding school, and the boys to 
college. 

250 



Scatter Your Flowers 251 

When the girls came home, pretty, refined, 
intelligent, educated, and the strong young 
men, blessed with all the new ideas of their 
time, the mother was a worn-out, faded old 
woman. The children went their own way, 
had their own homes, their own interests, and 
the poor mother was neglected. Things went 
along in this way for several years until fi- 
nally she was attacked with serious brain 
trouble, aggravated, no doubt, by disappoint- 
ment, a sense of loneliness and a lack of appre- 
ciation from her children which she had always 
fancied she would get in her old age. 

The shock woke them to a consciousness of 
their neglect. They all rushed to her assist- 
ance in her last hours, and, in an agony of 
grief, hung over her as she lay unconscious. 
One son, holding her in his arms, said to her, 
"You have been such a good mother to us." The 
mother's face showed a little color. Once mo-re 
she opened her eyes and whispered, "You 
never said so before, John," then the light died 
out of her eyes and she was gone, leaving her 
children, sobbing, conscience stricken. They 
piled flowers high on her coffin and gave her 
a costly funeral. 



252 Love's Way 



That was not love's way. Love that is worth 
the name sends its flowers to the living. It 
does not wait to heap them on the dead. Love 
helps when help is needed. It does not wait 
until it is too late. 

Love does not neglect the poor old mother 
until the last illness, and then shower her with 
luxuries she cannot enjoy. It helps her when 
a little thoughtful attention and kindness 
mean a great deal to her. Love writes fre- 
quent letters to the mother left behind in the 
old home. It does not send a little hurried 
note, after weeks and months of silence, tell- 
ing how busy one has been, so driven with 
affairs that one has not had time to write. 
Love finds a way; it always finds time to do 
kind things. 

The busy man of the world would claim that 
he is too busy to help another, but when he 
falls in love with a beautiful girl he finds time 
to bestow favors on her, time to visit her, time 
to write her. Real love would find time to 
see the poor old mother, to make her happy, 
to send her flowers, to send her candy, to re- 
mind her constantly of the love that belongs 
to her. 



Scattek Your Flowers 253 

There is a certain kind of giving which can- 
not be postponed. You must give the kind 
word, do the helpful deed as you go along or 
you lose your chance, and the blessing that 
goes with it. 

There is also a certain amount of giving of 
ourselves which must be done each day. If 
we postpone it until to-morrow the oppor- 
tunity of to-day will be lost, because to-mor- 
row will bring its own cause for our gifts; 
and we cannot crowd to-day into to-morrow. 

When the children of Israel were wander- 
ing in the wilderness, sweet, fresh manna fell 
every day to supply their needs. They were 
commanded not to save any of it for next day, 
because they were assured it would not keep, 
and that a sufficient amount would fall for 
each day's need. But in spite of this assur- 
ance they doubted and tried to hoard some 
for next day, but their hoarding was useless, 
for the manna always spoiled. 

Most of our daily personal gifts are like 
this manna of the Israelites. They will not 
keep. If they are not used as occasion de- 
mands they are lost. There are gifts of cheer- 
fulness, of smiles, gifts of kindness, gifts of 



254 Love's Way 



consideration, expressions of appreciation, 
gifts of praise, gifts of thanksgiving, which 
must go out every day as we go along, for we 
shall never go this way again. We never make 
back tracks on the life path. Every step is 
onward, and if we do not scatter our love 
seeds as we go along, the path behind us will 
be so much the more barren for the lives which 
shall follow. 

The excuse so common among busy people 
for every neglect or omission, "I haven't time," 
is no excuse at all for letting the manna of 
life spoil. 

You can no more postpone your daily giv- 
ing than you can postpone your breathing. If 
you postpone your gifts of kindly words to 
the servants, to the newsboy, to the conductor 
on the train, to employees, to your associates 
and especially to those who are in trouble, who 
have fallen by the way, those who need your 
help ; if you do not fling out these gifts, these 
blessings, as you go along, they will be lost 
forever. 

The following paragraph from "The Young 
Woman" has a personal application for most 
of us — men and women: 



Scattek Your Flowers 255 

' 'I sometimes think we women nowadays 
are in danger of being too busy to be really 
useful/ said an old lady, thoughtfully. 'We 
hear so much about making every minute 
count, and always having some work or course 
of study for spare hours, and having our ac- 
tivities all synchronized, that there is no place 
left for small wayside kindnesses. We go to 
see the sick neighbor and relieve the poor 
neighbor; but for the common every-day 
neighbor who has not fallen by the way, so 
far as we can see, we haven't a minute to 
spare. But everybody who needs a cupful of 
cold water isn't calling the fact out to the 
world, and there are a great many little pauses 
by the way that are no waste of time. The 
old-fashioned exchange of garden flowers over 
the back fence and a friendly chat about do- 
mestic matters helped to brighten weary days 
and brought more cheer than many a sermon. 
We ought not to be too busy to inquire for 
the girl away at school or to be interested in 
the letter from the boy at sea or "over there." 
It is a comfort to the mother's lonely heart 
to feel that somebody else cares for that which 
means so much to her. Especially we ought 



256 Love's Way 



not to be too busy to give and receive little 
kindnesses in our home.' May no one be able 
to say of us that we are too busy to be kind." 

If a Gladstone in the midst of pressing 
duties of international importance found time 
to visit a poor sick crossing sweeper, what ex- 
cuse can less busy and less important people 
offer for the neglect of these small acts of 
kindness which make the best of life? Glad- 
stone endeared himself to the heart of the 
English people by this more than by many 
of the great things he did. So did Phillips 
Brooks, by caring for a baby in the slums of 
Boston, that its mother might go out and get 
the fresh air, endear himself to the American 
people more than by many great acts of his 
noble life. 

Yet how many of us hoard our sympathy, 
our words of good cheer and encouragement, 
the helpful kindnesses within our power to be- 
stow, that might save many lives from misery, 
disaster and death ! We not only withhold our 
sympathy, but we cling to our material wealth, 
and wonder why we are not popular and well 
beloved. We hoard our money in houses and 
lands and stocks and other investments, refus- 



Scatter Your Flowers 257 

ing to help those in need, fearing we may some 
day need it ourselves. 

Here is a bright young girl working in some 
office or factory, trying to help a brother or 
sister to secure an education, or trying to sup- 
port an invalid father or mother. Her salary 
is small and out of all proportion to her serv- 
ices. She tells her employer of her pressing 
needs, of 'her sick parents, and asks for an in- 
crease in salary. He knows that she deserves 
it, and he is well able to pay more, but he 
selfishly puts her off with vague promises, tell- 
ing himself that he cannot afford the expense 
now, that later on he may be able to give the 
girl more money. But the years pass and the 
girl finds herself beyond the age of business 
service, penniless, broken down in health, and, 
but for the charity of friends, a public charge. 

This is a double crime, for it is not only 
a wrong to another, but a greater wrong to the 
God in one's own soul. In no other way do 
we morally starve and stunt our lives more 
than by postponing things which we know we 
ought to do for another, with the excuse that 
we can better afford it later. We know very 
well that the longer we postpone the good 



258 Love's Way 



deed, the less probability there is that we will 
ever do it. And in the end we lose something 
far more precious than the thing we should 
have given. 

He who denies the material aid that he could 
readily give, who withholds the fragrance of 
his love and helpfulness, finds that ultimately 
the very foundation of his heart dries up and 
his finer nature petrifies. He loses, too, the en- 
joyment that his wealth might procure, for the 
little shrunken soul cannot enjoy as the broad 
generous one can. 

There is a tradition that King Solomon re- 
ceived a gift of a costly vase from the Queen 
of Sheba which contained an elixir, one drop 
of which would restore health and prolong life 
indefinitely. Solomon's friends heard about 
this wonderful life-restoring elixir, and when 
death was near they begged for a drop of the 
precious fluid, but Solomon always refused, be- 
cause he feared that by opening the vase to 
get a drop the rest of the precious elixir might 
evaporate. At length he became very ill and 
bade his servants bring the vase, but behold, 
the precious contents had all evaporated! 

Things are so constituted in this world that 



Scatter Your Flowers 259 

selfishness defeats its own end. The fragrance 
and the beauty do not exist in the unopened 
bud. It is only when the bud opens up its 
petals and begins to give itself out to others 
that its beauty and fragrance are developed. 

Refuse to open your purse and soon you 
cannot open your sympathy. Refuse to love 
and you will soon lose the power to love ; your 
affections are paralyzed, your sympathy atro- 
phied, from selfish withholding and disuse, and 
you become a moral cripple. But the moment 
you fling open the door of your heart and 
allow the rose of your sympathy and help- 
fulness to send out, without stint, its fragrance 
and beauty, upon every passerby, whether 
pauper or millionaire, you begin to develop 
power. 

What would you think of a man who after 
suffering for years with a very painful dis- 
ease, had finally found a remedy which had 
entirely cured him, but who absolutely re- 
fused to tell others who were suffering with 
the same disease about the remedy? You 
would say that it was criminal. Perhaps you 
would hardly believe that any man would be 
so brutally selfish. But there are many beauti- 



260 Love's Way 



ful helpful things which come to us constantly, 
things which would cheer the discouraged, in- 
spire the down-hearted, and bring sunshine 
and joy into unfortunate lives about us, and 
these things we could pass along with little, 
if any, trouble to ourselves; but how many of 
us pass them on? How often when people 
say good things about us do we take it as a 
compliment, without even a thought of trying 
to help the one who helped us, who gave us 
the lift, the encouragement, or of passing the 
same helpful message on to another? How 
often do we hoard personal or household 
things with the thought that some time we 
may need them instead of passing them on to 
others who need them now! 

This is not love's way. Love is a generous 
giver. Love passes things along it can d© 
without. It does not lay up all sorts of things 
in the attic, because they may some time be 
used. The old clothing, the discarded toys, 
the furniture it has no use for, it gives to the 
poor. It gives garments away before they are 
useless, while there is yet some wear in them. 
It passes on books and magazines it has read 
and no longer needs. Love goes through the 



Scatter Your, Flowers 261 

house every little while and picks up and 
passes along to others less favored the things 
it can really do without. In other words, love 
has thought for others — feeling, sympathy, a 
longing to help, a passion to serve. 

If we practice love's way we will have noth- 
ing to do with post-mortem kindness. We 
will not postpone any service that love can 
render. We will not wait, thinking that we 
will do the kindly act, give the needed help, 
a little later on. We will not forget that there 
are many things which we must pass along as 
we receive them. 

Every day we can give out a lot of things 
that are invaluable, that will be a wonderful 
help to others not only without interfering with 
our daily duties, but with absolute benefit to 
them and to ourselves. After doing the things 
that Christ would have done under the circum- 
stances we feel a renewal of strength. After 
every kindly act we hear His words come back 
to us : "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
least of these little ones, you have done it unto 
me." 



XXI 

LOVE LETTERS FROM GOD 

Walt Whitman looked upon everything 
in nature as a message to man from the In- 
finite. He says: 

"To me converging objects of the universe perpetually flow; 
All are written to me and I must get what the writing means." 

Did you ever think that every flower, every 
tree, every ray of sunshine, every beautiful 
landscape, is really a loving message, a letter 
from God to us, His children? If we could 
only read His handwriting in the rocks, in the 
fields, in the flowers, in the stars, in the moon, 
in the clouds, in the sunset, in all His handi- 
work, what joy would be brought into our 
lives ! 

Whitman urged people to learn to read 
God's handwriting by going direct to the f oun- 
tainhead and studying and interpreting His 
messages for themselves. This is the only way 
to get their full meaning. Books and teachers 
open the door to knowledge concerning the 

262 



Love Letters from God 263 

infinite wisdom and beauty of nature and her 
laws, but only by intimate and loving personal 
communion with her can we read and under- 
stand God's messages written on every leaf 
of her great book. 

"Stop this night and day with me and you shall possess the 
origin of all poems. 

"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor 
look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in 
books. 

"You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourselves." 

The Creator has so fashioned us that we 
get our greatest happiness in rinding Him in 
His creations. Nature is packed, saturated 
with things which are calculated to make every 
living creature happy. They were made for 
our use and enjoyment. They give pleasure 
to every sense through which pleasure can be 
communicated — the sense of sight, of sound, 
of smell, of taste, of touch. Every avenue to 
the brain opens up a new source of enjoyment. 

Why is it that every normal person loves 
flowers? Simply because the same Power that 
created us made the flowers to fit our nature, 
to give us pleasure, to delight our senses. All 
things are made on a marvelous divine plan 
that fits each for a special purpose. There 



264 Love's Way 



are no unrelated things in the universe. Every 
one bears a relation to all other creations ; and 
to the seeing eye, the understanding mind, 
God is manifest in all. 

A friend once surprised Emerson out in the 
fields and overheard him exclaim, "God, God; 
all is God!" If every human being could thus 
see God in every natural object every day and 
every moment of his life what a joy living 
would be ! We would each be able to say with 
Emerson: "That which befits us, embosomed 
in wonder and beauty as we are, is cheerful- 
ness and courage, and the endeavor to realize 
our aspirations. Shall not the heart which 
has received so much, trust the Power by 
which it lives ? May it not quit other leadings, 
and listen to the Soul that has guided it so 
gently, and taught it so much, secure that the 
future will be worthy of the past?" 

It is a pity that we allow the sordid side of 
life, our grasping, greedy motives and efforts 
to obscure God's handwriting, to cover up the 
beautiful things, the finer things, the things 
that are worth while ; that we spend the greater 
part of our time struggling for non-essentials, 
while we neglect the essentials, the things of 



Love Letters from God 265 

real worth, the things that make true hap- 
piness. 

We cannot have the right attitude toward 
life; we cannot understand its meaning until 
we have learned to see God in all His crea- 
tions, — in the grass, the trees, the flowers, the 
mountains, the seas, the hills, the valleys, the 
clouds, the sunsets and sunrises. Yet many 
of us go through life without once enjoying 
the beauties spread out before us, without ever 
reading one of the glorious epistles that come 
to us from our Creator in every opening leaf 
and budding flower, in every shrub, in every 
tree, in every spear of grass. These beautiful 
epistles are telling us how God loves His chil- 
dren, but we. do not get their message because 
we have never learned to read them. We are 
in the position of a person traveling through 
the Yosemite Valley, through Yellowstone 
Park, and all through the most beautiful parks 
of California blindfolded. We have eyes but 
cannot see, and what we do not see we can- 
not know or understand. 

It is a curious thing that our educators 
should lay such stress upon reading the works 
of the "great authors," but pay practically no 



266 Love's Way 



attention whatever to the reading of the 
Greatest Author's works. Little pains is 
taken to teach our youth to read God's works, 
to study the miracles that are everywhere be- 
ing performed in nature's laboratory, but the 
study of dead languages and the analysis of 
classic writers form an important part of our 
so-called higher education. No wonder it is 
so rare a thing to find a college graduate who 
can read God's letters in the flowers, the fruits, 
the vegetables, in the strata of the rocks, in 
the shining sand, in the crystal waters, in the 
sunbeam, in the formation of the earth, in 
everything. 

One of the most excellent features of the 
Gary system of education is that it brings the 
children into closer relation with nature than 
any of the others. It takes them outdoors, 
where they are brought nearer to the Creator 
in His works. There is nothing else which 
will call so much of the beautiful out of chil- 
dren as the inculcation of a love and apprecia- 
tion of the wonderful works of God. 

In the unique school for boys established in 
India by the great poet and philosopher, 
Rabindranath Tagore, where love is the only 



Love Letters from God 267 

disciplinarian, learning to see and understand 
God in all things is a fundamental part of the 
boys' education. Teachers and pupils in this 
school all rise at half past four in the morning, 
and when dressed go outdoors chanting hymns 
in praise of "the Lord of the universe who is 
in the wood, in fire, in medicine, who per- 
vades and permeates the universe with his 
loving spirit." Tagore wants to see the boys 
in his school grow with the plants ; so each boy 
spreads his mat on the earth, and all study 
out under the trees. Sometimes the little 
students will be found studying an insect, 
sometimes the trees, the flowers, or other ob- 
jects of nature, but always whatever the study 
may be, they are interested and happy. 

Such a system could not be generally put 
in practice in America under present condi- 
tions, but the time will come when no one will 
be considered educated who is ignorant of 
God's handiwork. Children will be taught to 
read Him in the book of nature just as they 
are now taught grammar and mathematics, 
and they will enjoy that study as they enjoy 
nothing else. 

We tell our children fairy stories to interest 



268 Love's Way 



and amuse them, but the magic and marvels 
of fairyland are dull and lifeless compared 
with the wizardry of nature, the miracles she 
is constantly working before our eyes. We 
should teach our children the process of these 
miracles in simple language that they can 
understand, and when they look at flowers or 
fruit, vegetables or cereals, or any natural ob- 
jects, we should teach them to see the good 
back of them all, to see the Creator's love in 
providing them for our satisfaction and en- 
joyment. 

A little knowledge of nature would trans- 
form the world into a magic fairyland for our 
children. A"gassiz could hold a hallf ul of grown 
students spellbound during an entire lecture on 
a grain of sand, or on a single scale of a fish. 
If we could show boys and girls the wonder 
and glory of a grain of sand, of a crystal, of 
every common object, how marvelously inter- 
esting it would make life for them. 

Training children to analyze natural objects 
and to see the divine purpose back of them 
develops the imagination, the power of think- 
ing clearly, and a feeling of awe and reverence 
for the Omnipotent Power that planned the 



Love Letters from God 269 

universe. When we teach our children from the 
very start to see God in every plant, in every 
flower, in every tree, in every atom, in every 
molecule in the universe, life will have a won- 
derful m'eaning, a new joy for them. After 
this idea has once gotten hold of their being, 
never in all the years to come will life be other 
than a glory to them ; it can never be a sordid 
grind. 

Think what it would mean to the world to- 
day if every human being could read God's 
letters as Ruskin read them! Unless one 
knows and loves nature it would be impossible 
to imagine the rapture of his soul as he wan- 
dered through the country, drinking in with 
every sense its marvelous beauties. Clouds 
chasing one another through a blue sky across 
the sun, the grass, the trees, the flowers, Hie 
meadows, the brooks, the mountains, the birds, 
the insects, these made heaven for Ruskin. 
Yet to the average man, living his strenuous 
money-making life in the city, a day in the 
country filled with such glories would probably 
be an intolerable bore, because his finer sensi- 
bilities, his esthetic faculties, his love of the 



270 Love's Way 



beautiful had not been developed in childhood 
as had Ruskin's. 

All the money of a Rockefeller will never 
give its possessor a fraction of the real wealth 
owned by a Ruskin, a Wordsworth or a Bur- 
bank. It can never give him a tithe of the joy 
and happiness packed into one hour of the life 
of one who knows and loves God through His 
works. If you have never read a letter from 
God in nature, too transcendently lovely for 
description, you have not half lived. You are 
not an educated man or woman. When you 
can read God's letters to His children, you 
will see more in the weeds by the roadside, in 
the wild flowers, in the sun and the moon and 
the stars than ever was written about them 
in all the books that ever were printed. 



XXII 

THE HARMONY BATH 

"A man must be next to a devil who wakes 
angry," says Horace Bushnell. 

How we feel on waking depends on how we 
felt when going to sleep. No man should 
wake angry, because no man should go to 
sleep in an angry mood. 

The subconscious mind can build or destroy, 
can make us happy or miserable, can make 
us feel like a devil or an angel, according 
to the pattern we give it. Every thought 
dropped into the subconscious mind before we 
go to sleep is a seed that will germinate in 
the night while we are unconscious and, ulti- 
mately, bring forth a harvest of its kind. 

Dr. Elwood Worcester, of Boston, and 
many others working along the same lines 
and getting similar results, says: "There is 
a very easy and rational way by which many 
childish faults can be removed; that is, by 
making good suggestions to our children while 
they are in a state of natural sleep. 

27U 



272 Love's Way 



"My method is to address the sleeping child 
in a low and gentle tone, telling it that I am 
about to speak to it, and that it will hear me, 
but that my words will not disturb it nor will 
it awake. Then I give the necessary words, 
repeating them in different language several 
times. By this means I have removed childish 
fears and corrected bad habits. I have checked 
nervous twitchings, anger, violence, a disposi- 
tion to lie, and I have improved speech in 
stammering children." 

Before going to sleep we can, through auto- 
suggestion, treat ourselves in a similar way. 
We can impress whatever message we desire 
on the subconscious mind, and it will affect us 
J according to its nature. Swedenborg claimed 
that his "spiritual vision" was opened in the 
unconscious hours of the night. "When cor- 
poral and voluntary things are quiescent," he 
said, "the Lord operates." 

When we stop to think that the majority 
of us spend about one-third of our lives in 
sleep we get some idea of the importance of 
putting ourselves in the right mental attitude 
before going to sleep. Eight hours out of 
the twenty-four cuts a swath out of life that 



The Harmony Bath 278 

no one can afford to ignore or minimize. Here 
and there, of course, we find a rare exception 
like Thomas A. Edison, who does not need, 
and who insists that others do not need, to give 
anything like this amount of time to sleep. 
But the fact remains that pretty nearly all of 
us do spend from eight to nine hours out of 
the twenty-four in hed. This being so, if we 
make the most of life as a whole, we must pre- 
pare the mind for sleep with as much care as 
we prepare the body. 

No one can afford to awake to a new day 
feeling like a devil. To do our best during 
the day we must awake in tune with the In- 
finite, in harmony with the spirit of divine love. 
To do this you must go to sleep in the right 
mood. 

Never allow yourself to drop to sleep with 
anything on your mind against any living 
creature. If you have a grudge against an- 
other, forget it, wipe it out, erase it completely, 
and substitute a charitable love-thought, a 
kindly, generous thought, before you fall 
asleep. Don't let the sun go down on your 
wrath. 

No matter how tired you are, qt how late 



274 Love's Way 



you retire, make it a rule never to go to sleep 
without erasing every unfortunate impression, 
every disagreeable experience, every unkind 
thought, every particle of envy, jealousy and 
ill-will from your mind. Just imagine that 
the words "Harmony," "Love," "Good-will 
to every living creature," are written all over 
your bedroom in letters of light. Repeat the 
words to yourself, or, if alone, out loud until 
your mental atmosphere responds to their sug- 
gestion. 

Unless we attune our minds to harmony for 
sleep, there will be a constant strain on the 
nervous system all through the night. For 
even if we do manage to go to sleep with a 
troubled mind, the brain keeps on working 
along the same line of thought. If, for in- 
stance, we go to sleep worrying, depressed, 
jealous, envious, angry, melancholy, we will 
awake tired, exhausted physically and men- 
tally. There will be no elasticity or spring in 
our brain, no buoyancy in our spirits. The 
blood poisoned by wrong thinking is incapable 
of refreshing the brain. 

Those who have learned the art of putting 
themselves in harmony with all the world be- 



The Harmony Bath 275 

fore they retire, never harboring a thought of 
jealousy, hatred, envy, revenge or ill-will 
against anyone, or irritating or distressing 
thoughts of any sort, not only get a great deal 
more out of sleep but they retain their youth 
and vigor much longer than those who are in 
the habit of going to bed all out of tune, or of 
reviewing all their disagreeable experiences 
and thinking over all their troubles and trials 
after they lie down. I know men whose lives 
have been revolutionized by adopting the prac- 
tice of putting themselves in a harmonious 
condition, getting in tune with the Infinite be- 
fore going to sleep. 

Many people age more during sleep than 
while awake, because they do not prepare their 
minds for sleep. They do not take their men- 
tal harmony bath, but go to bed nursing their 
grouches, their hatreds, their petty jealousies, 
their worries, their anxieties and envies. These 
enemies of their peace and happiness, working 
all night, cut deep furrows in the brain, which 
soon appear on the face. 

I know a man who is aging very rapidly 
from his business and family worries. I fre- 
quently travel morning and evening to and 



276 Love's Way 



from the city with him, and instead of looking 
fresh and rejuvenated in the morning he actu- 
ally looks older and more careworn than he 
did the night before. This is because he takes 
his troubles to bed with him and falls asleep 
worrying and depressed. Instead of practis- 
ing mental chemistry, and neutralizing or driv- 
ing them out by the peace thought, the har- 
mony and love thoughts, he lets these vicious 
mental devils, which are playing such havoc 
in his life, work all night in his brain. And, 
of course, they poison his blood, deplete his 
vitality and cut his wrinkles deeper and deeper 
every night. 

At no time can we use auto-suggestion, this 
great "therapeutic agency" and "uplifting 
ethical force," with more effect than on re- 
tiring for the night. That is the time of all 
others when the rush and hurry of the day 
is past, when we can most effectively put our- 
selves in tune with the Infinite. Taking love 
as our key thought, there is no mental state, 
no matter how troubled or worried, how dis- 
cordant and out of tune, that cannot be 
brought into harmony through auto-sugges- 
tion. 



The Harmony Bath 277 

There are marvelous possibilities for health 
building, success and happiness building in 
ourselves, in impressing on the mind as vividly 
as possible before going to sleep what we 
would like to become and what we long to 
accomplish. That wonderful force in your 
subjective self will immediately begin to shape 
the pattern, to occupy the model which you 
thus give it. If you put your objective mind 
in tune with your highest hopes, your loftiest 
expectations and ideals, your subconscious 
mind will do a lot of creating during the night. 
It will build rather than tear down, as it does 
when one goes to sleep in a discordant mood. 

If you make it a rule to go to sleep in a 
harmonious mental attitude you will be de- 
lighted to find not only how much fresher and 
younger and more virile you will be, but how 
much more you will accomplish from day to 
day. If we should prepare the mind for sleep 
with the same care that we prepare the body; 
if we were to give it a cleansing mental bath, 
erasing from it all black, discordant pictures, 
all the worries and fears which harassed us 
during the day, instead of taking them to bed 
with us and allowing them to rob us of needed 



278 Love's Way 



rest, what a difference it would make in our 
achievement, in our lives! 

If children were trained to form the habit 
of falling asleep every night with pleasant 
thoughts uppermost, with bright, beautiful 
pictures in their minds, they would wake in 
the morning fresh, vigorous, cheerful, instead 
of peevish, fretful and unhappy, as is the case 
with so many. And what a difference it would 
make to them when started on an active career 
to find this priceless habit as natural as eating 
and drinking! 

But it is never too late to form the habit. 
No matter what your age you may begin now. 
You can, if you only persist in continually 
flooding your mind with the love thought, fall 
asleep every night like a tired, happy child, 
and awake in the morning just as refreshed 
and happy. Your subconscious self will, after 
a while, carry out your behests without any 
conscious effort on your part. The habit of 
falling asleep in a mental atmosphere of love 
and peace will become second nature. 

From the standpoint of physical well-being 
alone it is imperative to form the habit. It is 
fundamental to sound health to make it a rule 



The Haemony Bath 279 

never to discuss business troubles, or anything 
whatever that vexes and irritates at night, es- 
pecially just before retiring. When you com- 
pose yourself to rest, let there be nothing in 
your mind which will cause you regret, no 
ghosts of unforgiven offenses; no grudges or 
jealousies. Be sure that your mental bath has 
washed out everything that could offend, 
everything that could cause you pain. For- 
give all of your enemies if you have any. Do 
not let yourself go to sleep with any bitter 
thought in your mind. 

Mental chemistry shows us that opposite 
thoughts — thoughts of love and hate, of har- 
mony and discord, of good-will and ill-will — 
cannot exist in. the mind at the same time. If 
you flood your mind with love thoughts, good- 
will thoughts, with optimistic, hopeful, help- 
ful, pictures of yourself and others you will 
erase all unkind thoughts, all thoughts of re- 
venge, jealousy, envy, hatred, ill-will. 

If you form the habit of going to sleep with 
the Christ mental attitude toward every hu- 
man being, with the mind that was His, with 
the philosophy that was His, that was re- 
flected in the Golden Rule, holding in your 



280 Love's Way 



heart good-will for every living creature, you 
will awake every morning refreshed and re- 
newed. You will arise a new creature, full of 
hope, energy and courage, with a new lease 
of life, a new joy in living. 



XXIII 

HEROISM AT HOME 

Someone has said: "Some day we shall 
learn that the little deeds of love wrought un- 
consciously as we pass on our way are greater 
in their helpfulness and still shine more 
brightly in the life than the deeds of renown 
which we think of as alone making a life 
great." 

Never was there a greater mistake than to 
think that heroism, courage, daring, are con- 
fined to the field of battle. It doesn't matter 
what post we are assigned to in the battle of 
life we have an opportunity to do heroic things 
every day. If we have the spirit of brotherly 
love ; if we are filled with the love of truth and 
justice; if we are determined always to stand 
for the right no matter what the cost, we are 
unceasingly battling for the higher things of 
life. 

It is as heroic to take a firm stand for hon- 
esty, when it may cost you your position, be- 

281 



282 Love's Way 



cause your employer is not honest himself, or 
to rescue a person from a burning building, or 
from drowning, as it is to go into battle. It 
is heroic to stand for the right when others 
sneer and condemn you for doing so. It often 
takes more courage to stand alone for the 
right, for justice, for principle, when those 
about you ridicule and caricature you for 
your stand, than it would be to walk up to a 
cannon's mouth in battle, under the excite- 
ment, the stimulus of action and the support 
of the comradeship of a multitude of others. 
If you can keep up your courage when 
others lose heart; if you can keep pushing on 
when others turn back; if you can smile and 
wait when others play the coward and quit; 
if you can be serene in the face of misfortune, 
and of failure; if you can keep your nerve, 
and a level head when others get panicky; if 
you can carry yourself like a conqueror, keep 
your fixity of purpose when others waver; if 
you can stand unmoved and see your pros- 
perity swept away from you, even your home 
sold over your head; if when you have been 
deceived where you trusted, your hopes and 
plans wrecked, your future apparently 



Heroism at Home 283 

blighted, and you still refuse to lose your 
courage and your grip on yourself, or your 
faith in the Power that controls your life, then 
you may know that there is a hero, or a hero- 
ine, in you as noble as any that ever gave up 
his life on the field of battle for a great cause. 

A woman who has been inveigled into an 
unfortunate marriage, taken away from her 
girlhood home and those who love her into a 
little cabin on a vast prairie twenty miles from 
any sign of civilization, writes: "Exiled from 
home and parents, deprived forever from pur- 
suing my chosen vocation, the dream of my 
life faded out, lost, what have I to make hap- 
piness out of?" 

Now, this is a situation that calls for that 
sort of moral heroism which as far transcends 
physical heroism as a high spiritual love tran- 
scends that which is merely physical, of the 
senses 'alone. 

Whether this woman rises above, or sinks 
beneath the condition in which she finds her- 
self rests wholly with her. The soul centered 
and poised in Divine Love is endowed with 
strength to conquer every limitation of the 
body, every condition or circumstance that 



284 Love's Way 



would hold it down. You can keep your eyes 
turned inward, nurse your grief and disap- 
pointment until it conquers you, or you can 
look out and up at God's fair universe, and 
cry with Henley: 

"Out of the night that covers me 
Black as the pit from pole to pole 
I thank whatever gods there be 
For my unconquerable soul." 

This woman says she is not only exiled from 
her home, but exiled from happiness. No per- 
son is exiled from happiness unless he exiles 
himself. The chances are that if she would 
examine herself she would find a great many 
things which would alleviate her distress and 
help her bear her disappointment bravely. 
There are many things even in her situation 
for which millions of people would envy her. 
She is sound and whole in body and mind, with 
all her senses unimpaired, free to absorb the 
sweet pure air, the bright sunshine, the sights 
and sounds of nature all around her. 

Few of us ever stop to think that the nearer 
we are to nature, to the source of things, 
the greater our opportunities for gathering 
strength and power to do, — for power springs 



Heroism at Home 285 

from the soil, from the sunshine. The coun- 
try is the source of power, of beauty. How 
many who are weak and ailing, crippled or 
handicapped in some way, mental or physical; 
how many shut up in cities, with no possibility 
of visits to the country, would envy this woman 
her freedom, her great opportunity to keep 
close to nature and to study her at close range. 

She acknowledges that there are those, even 
though at a great distance, who love her. Her 
ability to communicate with them still leaves 
her a great source of happiness. She probably 
does not realize how many people there are 
hungering for love, who have not a soul of 
their own kith and kin on earth, perhaps not a 
single human being who is sufficiently inter- 
ested to care what becomes of them. In spite 
of her overwhelming disappointment, her lone- 
liness, the hard circumstances in which she 
finds herself, she still has possibilities to make 
of her life a sublime success. 

The way we meet our problems, great or 
small, is the test of our courage and of our 
faith in the greater Love that ordereth all 
things well. Remember, my friend, no matter 
where you are, or what your environment, you 



286 Love's Way 



were sent here as an ambassador of the Al- 
mighty. You are here on His business — to 
make a worthy contribution to the world, to 
deliver the message with which He entrusted 
you. Now an ambassador must go where he 
is sent, and do his duty, attend to his business 
like a man, not whine, grumble, groan or 
whimper. You did not choose your present 
place, but the mission on which you were sent 
has made it necessary for you to go there, and, 
no matter whether you feel like it or not, it is 
your business to do your level best to be a 
good ambassador, to meet your difficulties in 
the spirit of a brave, strong, self-reliant soul. 
It is the business of every one of us to meet 
every situation in life with courage, with a 
stoic but cheerful determination to make the 
best and the most of whatever comes. This is 
our task, this is our mission, wherever we find it. 
Thoreau, that great student and lover of 
nature, said, "God could not be unkind to me 
if He tried." If we have the right spirit, if 
we are animated by the love motive, there is no 
situation which we cannot turn to advantage. 
To have one's dream of happiness shattered 
at the outset is no little thing, but the only 



Heroism at Home 287 

hope of reconstructing it is to meet the situa- 
tion bravely and make the best of it. Not 
many are called upon to meet great trials like 
this. The majority are of the minor kind. 
Unfortunately, one disappointment, one little 
setback, makes most of us forget all the good 
things we still enjoy, just as one stormy day 
makes many people forget months of pleasant 
weather. The little cloud in front of our eyes 
at the moment seems to cover the whole sky, 
to shut out all sunlight and beauty. If in- 
stead of keeping our eyes turned inward we 
would keep them turned outward like Thoreau, 
we would see as he did, that "God could not 
be unkind to us if He tried." 

When we stop to think of the things which 
constitute the average life we shall be sur- 
prised to find how seldom the big problem, the 
great dead, the unusual opportunity, the ex- 
traordinary experience enters into it. Some of 
the finest characters that ever lived never had 
met great trouble or unhappiness, never did a 
single thing that was very distinctive, very 
original, or heroic in the accepted sense. It 
was their whole life habit of accepting cheer- 
fully whatever came, of doing good wherever 



288 Love's Way 



an opportunity presented itself, of being kind, 
courteous, always helping someone somewhere, 
that made them strong, poised, unselfish, really 
noble men and women. 

There is a wonderful meaning in the com- 
mon every-day happenings, the little things 
that come up in the daily routine, which most 
of us lose sight of, and that is, the opportunity 
they give for character building, for mental 
training, for the object of all of life's endeavor 
— man-building and woman-building. 

Your name and face may never appear in 
the newspapers or magazines, but every day 
you have an opportunity to live a beautiful 
life, a helpful life. The heroic virtues, cour- 
age, fortitude, unselfishness, can be practised 
behind the lines in the home, in the shop, in 
the factory, in the market-place, as well as in 
the forefront on the field of battle. 

Only once or twice in a lifetime, and per- 
haps not at all, will you have a chance to do 
a thing that is heroic in a spectacular way, 
something that will attract widespread atten- 
tion ; but the little, common, every-day courte- 
sies, the loving acts of kindness and helpful- 
ness that count so much in the long run, we 



Heroism at Home 289 

can practise every day. These are the things 
that make character, that beautify and ennoble 
life. These are really the things that in the 
aggregate make greatness. They may not win 
medals as will some physically daring, heroic 
deed, but they will win something even more 
valuable, — the strength that comes from daily 
service, without hope of notice or reward. 



XXIV 

WHAT THE BEE TEACHES US 

Maeterlinck says that a single bee lacks 
the necessary intelligence to make honey; but 
that a hive of bees develops a high order of 
intelligence. 

It is only when they work together that bees 
are productive. If all the bees in the hive were 
separated and forced to live alone they would 
make no honey, not even to sustain life. 
Through lack of individual intelligence they 
would die of starvation. 

A hive of bees has a well-defined purpose, 
toward which each must work or suffer the 
consequences. If, for example, a bee bringing 
honey back to the hive eats it instead of storing 
it for the general good, the other bees sting it 
to death. 

One bee alone has no purpose, no plans, no 
intelligence. In short, a bee separated from 
its fellow bees is absolutely helpless, absolutely 
useless. 

290 



What the Bee Teaches Us 291 

i 
What is true of the bee is in a large degree 

true of a human being. A man separated from 

his fellow-men, without any of the social 

advantages, conveniences or facilities which 

community life affords, would be practically 

helpless. The strength of each one of us is 

dependent on our unity with all the others, 

because we are all parts of one whole. 

The intelligence of the community brain of 
a town or village is much superior to the indi- 
vidual brains composing it. Men, who are 
stingy, narrow, unprogressive, will vote en 
masse to do things for the general welfare 
which individually they would never consent 
to. 

History and experience show that mankind 
rises or falls together. Every real and perma- 
nent advance since the world began has been 
due to the action of the great principle of 
human brotherhood — the majority acting to- 
gether for the good of all. 

It is a remarkable thing that practically all 
of the experiments for the attainment of ideal 
citizenship by little groups of altruistic people, 
who separated themselves from the rest of the 
world to start colonies modeled on the Brook 



292 Love's Way 



Farm plan, have been total failures. Theo- 
retically, it would seem that the colonization 
of intellectual, highly moral and industrious 
people should produce an ideal condition of 
society. But the results of actual experience 
in exclusive class-grouping of this sort have 
always been disappointing. 

The fact is, we are made to help one another 
in the mass. It is a law of nature that men 
and women begin to deteriorate when they are 
separated from their fellows. No man can 
permanently separate himself from his fellows 
without shrinking. No one, no matter how 
clever or resourceful, is independent. He is 
not a whole man alone; but he is large and 
powerful in proportion as he is related to his 
fellows. He must touch other lives or lose 
power. He is so constituted that a thousand 
relations with his brother man are necessary to 
his largest development, his completest life. 
When he cuts himself off from the common life 
he cuts off a great many currents of power, 
closes many avenues of interrelation which 
bring strength and rich experience. 

Take a writer, for example. If he secludes 
himself from society he begins after a while to 



What the Bee Teaches Us 293 

lose his mental vigor; his brain has less stam- 
ina; there is a weakening all along the line 
until, if he secludes himself too long, his writ- 
ings become flat, insipid, flavorless. To keep 
up his standard his brain must have new food, 
greater variety, fresh experiences. He must 
meet new people, visit new scenes, mix with the 
world, fulfil his social functions. This is na- 
ture's law; and the penalty for its violation is 
mental paralysis. 

What is true of the writer is true of men 
and women in every calling. Separate your- 
self from the. world, and you are like a single 
wire in an untwisted cable. A large part of 
your strength comes from your close associa- 
tion with other men and women. It did not 
reside in you, but only became yours when you 
were closely twisted with the others. 

"Men succeed only as they work together," 
said Elbert Hubbard. "Without companion- 
ship ambition droops; courage flags, reason 
totters, ambition vanishes, and the man dies. 
Nature puts a quick limit on the horrors of 
solitary confinement — she unhinges the reason 
of the prisoner, and he addresses comrades who 
have no existence save in his fevered imagina- 



294 Love's Way 



tion. The man who does useful work is in 
direct communication with other people — he 
works for others, and the thought that he is 
doing something for somebody sustains him." 

This tying together of human beings so that 
they cannot get their fullest power alone is one 
of the wisest provisions of nature for the de- 
feat of selfishness, the greatest foe of human 
development. 

We have seen that when the bee does not 
work for the common good it is put out of the 
way. In human society, we don't put the self- 
ish units to death, but their selfishness brings 
its own punishment, just as the broad gener- 
ous spirit brings its own reward. For the 
more a man helps others, the more closely he 
touches other lives, the more he expands and 
grows, the more love and power comes back to 
him, while the selfish man, who secludes him- 
self from others, who has no sympathy for his 
neighbors, who tries to get everything for him- 
self, and gives as little as possible, is constantly 
shrinking and narrowing his boundaries. He 
is robbing himself of power when he thinks he 
is acquiring it. In the long run, selfishness 
defeats its object. 



What the Bee Teaches Us 295 

Every created thing is a part of the divine 
universal plan, in which each of us is intended 
to play an individual part. But though indi- 
vidual, we are still one in essence, "For," as 
St. Paul says, "by one Spirit are we all bap- 
tized into one body, whether we be Jews or 
Gentiles, whether we be bond or free ; and have 
been all made to drink into one Spirit." Our 
neighbor is ourself because there is only one 
mind in the universe. And since all is an ex- 
pression of that Infinite Mind, there can be no 
real separateness of individuals, except in their 
failure to recognize that "one life runs through 
all creation's veins." 

Some of us seem to think that we are inde- 
pendent centers of intelligence instead of being 
parts of a scheme so vast, a plan so magnifi- 
cent, not only for the races that live upon our 
little earth planet, but for the numberless 
beings who live upon other planets, that it is 
beyond the scope of our imagination. 

When we consider that hundreds of thou- 
sands of earths like our own could be taken 
into the sun through one of the holes on its 
surface which we call "sun spots," and that 
this sun is but as a single grain of sand com- 



296 Love's Way 



pared with the number of the heavenly bodies, 
we get a faint idea of the earth's littleness, and 
of the immensity of the universe. 
The idea that, literally, 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body Nature is and God the soul," 

that there is but one principle running through 
the universe, one life, one truth, one reality, 
and tnat this principle is divinely beneficent, 
is the most inspiring, encouraging idea that 
ever entered the human mind. 

When we realize that we are actually one 
with our neighbor we cannot help loving him 
as ourselves, because he is one with us in his 
oneness with the great universal principle 
which underlies all being, which is- the truth of 
all truths. It is our ignorance of this oneness 
of life, our failure to realize this marvelous 
unity of being that gives us a false sense of 
life. This is what makes us selfish. This is 
why we grab things from our neighbor because 
we do not know that he is really ourself . 

To contemplate the oneness of all creation, 
to hold fast to the truth that all things are but 
a manifestation of the creative thought of 
Qod, not only draws all people closer to God 



What the Bee Teaches Us 297 

and to one another, but it enlarges the mind 
and enriches the nature as nothing else can. 
The habit of looking upon all human beings as 
one kills ill-will and hatred. It removes all 
prejudice against unfortunate human beings 
who have gone astray, sinned greatly, or be- 
come criminals. The thought of our oneness 
with the Creator gives us a new view of life, a 
new thought of man and a new thought of 
God. 

This idea of man's unity with God captured 
the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe, who said: 
"Think that the sense of individual identity 
will be gradually merged in the general con- 
sciousness; that man, for example, will at 
length attain that awfully triumphant epoch 
when he shall recognize his existence as that 
of Jehovah ! . . . This is not an atheistic ban- 
ishment of God and His holy angels, but is, 
on the contrary, the enthronement of a new 
Jehovah — a God that has become conscious 
and potent in the human mind." 

The full realization of our oneness with 
God; that we actually live, move, and have 
our being in Him will elevate our standards, 
will give us wider, nobler views of life. 



298 Love's Way 



Selfishness will then disappear because it 
will not mean anything, or rather because we 
shall see that it only hurts us, since all are 
working for the same end. We have no desire 
to cheat ourselves, to get something desirable 
away from ourselves ; and when we realize that 
we are all parts of one life, branches of the 
same parent vine, we shall have no desire to get 
things away from others, to take advantage of 
them, to cheat them, because that would only 
mean cheating and robbing ourselves. It 
would be like a man taking money out of one 
pocket and putting it into the other and try- 
ing to convince himself that he had made a good 
bargain, that he had gained something. If 
my brother is myself, and I know it, I can have 
no desire to take advantage of him. 

The truth is that love is the great mind 
opener, the great heart opener, the great de- 
veloper. It is what holds society together. It 
is the source of all peace and harmony. If 
children in all countries were trained to love 
humanity, to love all countries and their in- 
habitants as they are taught to love their own 
Country and countrymen, there would be no 
wars. But even the great war now devastating 



What the Bee Teaches Us 299 

the earth, is teaching us the unity of human 
interests, in that what injures one injures all. 
We are all, in greater or less degree, suffering 
from its effects. And so unless we all work 
together now and after this war is over to bring 
good out of evil, the suffering and the sacrifices 
it has involved will be in vain. 

We have been drawn into this tragic war in 
defense of justice and democracy, and we are 
going to see to it that it shall be the end of war. 
The world has tried the hatred way, the way 
of war, the butchering way all up through the 
centuries, and they have never worked. Force 
has always been a failure. Civilization has 
tried all sorts of ways which have failed ; only 
one way has worked under all sorts of condi- 
tions, and that is love's way. It is the only 
way which will banish wars and human strife, 
hatred and revenge, selfishness and greed from 
the world. A principle which always works; 
which fits every case and every emergency, 
must be a universal principle. 

The time will come when man will think of 
his neighbor as himself, because all men will 
then see the oneness of all life, of all truth, of 
all principle. The coming man will know that 



300 Love's Way 



whatever hurts his neighbor will hurt himself, 
because we are all one with the One. The com- 
ing man will see that he is not a separate unit, 
but that he bears the same relation to mankind 
as a whole as a drop of water bears to the ocean. 
He will know that "the thought and will of 
God are in every particle of the substance of 
the universe, in every manifestation of energy, 
power or force, and in every manifestation of 
life." 

Already we are beginning to find that all 
human beings are so closely related that one 
suffers or rejoices, is happy or miserable, ac- 
cording as others are affected. Our welfare, 
our prosperity, our happiness, are not separate 
from the general welfare, prosperity and hap- 
piness; they are interdependent. And the 
time will come when we shall not consider any 
city or town either moral or beautiful so long 
as it tolerates cancer spots, black spots of 
poverty and squalor, crime and misery in its 
midst. 

"No man has come to true greatness," says 
Phillips Brooks, "who has not felt in some 
degree that his life belongs to his race, and that 
what God gives him, He gives him for man- 



What the Bee Teaches Us 301 

kind." We cannot lay claim to real humanity, 
let alone greatness, until we have conquered 
all inclination to enrich ourselves at the ex- 
pense of our neighbor, to take advantage of 
him in any way. Only in so far as we treat our 
neighbor as ourselves will we find true happi- 
ness and success. 



XXV 

LOVE'S WAY AND CHRISTMAS GIVING 

One day, during the last Christmas rush, I 
overheard a little ragged boy say to his baby 
sister as they stood gazing hungrily at the big 
show window of a toy shop, "How I wish I 
eould get that dollie for you, sister. You 
know you never had a dollie. I do wish I had 
money to get that one." 

One of the most pathetic things in life, one 
which has often made my heart bleed during 
Christmastide is to see poor ragged children 
like these little ones, looking so longingly into 
the gaily dressed shop windows at the dolls 
and toys and other beautiful things, the like 
of which they never had in their lives. What 
a wonderful time they would have ; how happy 
they think they would be if they only had the 
money to buy some of these wonderful things ! 
But with the wisdom which comes prematurely 
to the children of the poor, they resign them- 
selves to the consciousness that they never can 
have them. 

302 



Christmas Giving 303 

Not less pathetic than the children are the 
mothers who vainly long to brighten Christ- 
mas for their little ones with the gifts their 
child-hearts crave. When I see poor women 
who are obliged to leave their children at home 
and go out washing or scrubbing floors, stand- 
ing with their scrubbing pails on their arms 
looking so longingly at the Christmas show 
windows, I can read their thoughts. How 
they long to take some of those things home 
to their loved ones, things which they know 
that though they should scrub their fingers to 
the bone their children will never have. Yet 
how eagerly they look at the pretty clothing, 
the dolls, the toys, the things which they see 
other children have, but which are forever 
denied to their children, who are just as pre- 
cious to them as the better-to-do children are 
to their mothers. 

We are all looking into the show windows 
of life, longing to get the beautiful things we 
see displayed there, the things which will de- 
light, which will add to our joy and happi- 
ness. And those of us who enjoy an abun- 
dance of the good things find it hard to deny 
ourselves, especially at Christmas time when 



304 Love's Way 



all purse-strings are loosened, any of the 
superfluous things we desire. All sorts of 
temptations are constantly besieging us dur- 
ing the holiday season to buy things for our- 
selves and for others which we do not need. 
Here is where the right sort of Christmas giv- 
ing will do a double service. The very learn- 
ing to say "No" to selfish desires, the denying 
ourselves the things we long for, but can do 
without, helps build a strong, beautiful char- 
acter. 

To refrain from burdening well-to-do peo- 
ple with a lot of gimcrack things which are of 
no earthly use to any one, and to give the 
money which is usually expended on these 
things where it is really needed, would be to 
give in the spirit of Him whose nativitv we 
Commemorate. 

Dorothy Dix, one Christmas, told of a young 
man who showed her a couple of hundred of 
silly presents he had received from girls, "and 
who," she said, "after sadly inquiring of me 
what I supposed most of the things were in- 
tended for, remarked: 'Gee! I'd trade the 
whole lot off for one good pair of socks.' ' 

How many men and women find themselves 



Christmas Giving 305 

in a similar position after Christmas. And 
how gladly they would throw the stuff in the 
ash-barrel were it not for the fear of offending 
their friends. In how many homes do we see 
these Christmas presents, which are neither 
useful nor ornamental, lying about cluttering 
table and mantelpiece, always in the way. 
The recipients do not dare to throw them 
away or put them out of sight for fear those 
who gave them might notice, and think they 
were not appreciated. 

What is the sense of spending money and 
time in embarrassing well-to-do-people with 
useless stuff of this sort, when both might be 
expended in doing real good ? This year when 
once happy and prosperous people in war-dev- 
astated Europe are starving and looking to 
America for help in their awful need, waste 
of any sort is a crime. It is our privilege to 
be able to give, to give generously in response 
to any appeal for help, but in our giving let 
us not forget the little ragged children and 
the poor mothers, even in prosperous America, 
who are looking longingly at the Christmas 
show windows for the things they ought to 
have, but cannot themselves buy. 



306 Love's Way 



In almost every home there are discarded 
dolls and toys, outgrown articles of clothing, 
pictures, books, all sorts of things which are 
no longer needed, or used by the family, but 
which would make many a poor mother and 
many a little child happy this Christmastide. 

The time is coming when we shall have up- 
rooted from our economic system the evils 
that make poverty and misery in this beautiful 
world; when no one need be poor but through 
his own fault. But until that happy time 
arrives, no one is excused from doing his part 
in hastening its coming, or from his daily re- 
sponsibility in helping to bear his brother's 
burdens. 

To have and not to give, or to give stingily, 
grudgingly, or only to those from whom we 
expect something in return, is to be outside 
the pale of Christian brotherhood. It is to 
know nothing of the Christ spirit; it is to be 
contemptible. Emerson says, "He is base — 
and that is the only base thing in the universe 
— to receive favors and render none. In the 
order of nature we cannot render benefits to 
those from whom we receive them, or only 
seldom. But the benefit we receive must be 



Christmas Giving 307 

rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, 
cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too 
much good staying in your hand. It will fast 
corrupt and worm worms. Put it away 
quickly in some sort." 

The world war is loosening our heart and 
our purse-strings as never before, and we are 
finding ourselves all the richer for it. In the 
broadening of our sympathies, and the open- 
ing of the door of narrow self-centered lives 
into wider interests and world fellowship with 
all who are suffering, we are learning the truth 
of Christ's "It is more blessed to give than to 
receive." 

Perhaps you feel rather poor this year on 
account of the high cost of living, and the 
many war funds to which duty compelled you 
to contribute, and have been thinking of cut- 
ting down on your Christmas presents. By 
all means, let us all cut out the presents that 
we were wont to give in the quid pro quo 
spirit. But let us not cut out the small gifts 
from which we expect no return, but which 
will make somebody happy. 

Love, which is the essence of the Christmas 
spirit, always finds some way to serve. 



308 Love's Way 



A little girl who had only three pennies 
with which to* buy a Christmas present for her 
grandmother was puzzling over what she could 
buy with so small a sum when a happy thought 
came to her. With one penny she bought a 
sheet of paper and an envelope, and with the 
other two a stamp, to carry a letter in which 
she said, "I have no gift to send you, dear 
grandma, but I love you, love you, love you, 
and here are a hundred kisses for you." 
Among the many remembrances which that 
grandmother received, it is said that this child- 
ish letter was the only one which she cried over, 
and locked up with her dead baby's curl of 
hair and one or two other priceless things. 

I know a very poor woman who has nothing 
to give in the way of material presents, but 
who does more good according to her means 
than anyone else I know of. She makes a 
point of going about among poor people be- 
fore Christmas, trying to cheer up and com- 
fort the cripples, the unfortunate, the sick and 
discouraged, all those who are in trouble. She 
gives such a wealth of love, of sympathy, of 
encouragement, of sunshine, of good cheer, 
that they feel richer after she has visited them 



Christmas Giving 309 

than many dollars' worth of material gifts 
would have made them. Mere things are cold 
and unsympathetic in comparison with what 
x his poor woman gives them. 

No one is so poor that he cannot give some- 
thing. Where love is there is always some- 
thing to give, for "love never faileth." But 
where love is not, where the Christ spirit is 
absent, there is poverty, indeed. 

"Though Christ a thousand times 
In Bethlehem be born, 
If He's not born in thee, 
Thy soul is all forlorn" 



Cije ^tctortous Mttituht 

By ORISON SWETT HARDEN 
A Soul Doctor 

"This book should be read by all discouraged 
people. It is a tonic — and a moral bracer of the 
first order. Most of us need to have our self- 
confidence stimulated, and Dr. Marden stimulates 
it. He is a soul doctor." 

Richmond Times Dispatch. 

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"Full of fresh ideas, couched in straightforward 
language. Buoyant, breezy and highly stimulat- 
ing." San Francisco Bulletin. 

A Wallet of Truth 

"There is a crammed wallet of truth in your 
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fine courage of life." Edwin Markham. 

Excellent Advice 

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vice contained in Dr. Marden's book will make 
instructive reading. It is written in forcible and 
easily understandable style." Buffalo Commercial. 

Cannot Fail to Help 

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so uplifting and wholesome in subject matter, that 
it cannot fail to be of help to many people who 
are in need of just such advice." 

Des Moines Register. 

Nothing More Valuable 

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commended it to our students, put it in our library, 
and it has been in great demand. I know of 
nothing finer or more valuable for young people 
who are struggling for an education." 

Rev. O. S. Kriebel, D.D. 



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J^Safetng Htfe a Masterpiece 

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storehouse of apt anecdotes. Welcome as a steady 
gleam of sunshine on a gloomy day." 

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Teaches Many a Truth 

"Dr. Marden teaches many a plain, common 
truth in simple but effective epigram." 

Book Review Digest. 

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of his books; the difficulty lies in forgetting its 
truth." Norfolk Ledger Dispatch. 

Appeal to Young Men 

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the young man whose ambition is to make a suc- 
cess of life. It is written so entertainingly that 
it is a privilege, as well as a pleasure, to read 
it." Pittsburgh Gazette Times. 

Antidote for Bad Luck 

"If li.ck seems to be passing you by on the 
wrong side, read this book." Christian Advocate. 

A Fine Inspirational Book 

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young. It holds the attention and stimulates the 
reader to want to make his life a masterpiece." 

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felling <3Cf}mgg 

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A Book For Salesmen 

"Deals with the training of salesmen and the 
necessary attributes to make them successful. All 
phases of the subject are considered: clothes, 
presence, ability to talk, persuasive powers, tact, 
helping and getting the customer to buy." 

Bookseller. 

Will be Welcome 

"A book that will be gladly welcomed by sales 
managers and salesmen in every field." 

Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

Helps to Prosperity 

"One of the best things that you have written, 
and ought to be in the hands of every man who 
would call himself a salesman. There are many 
points therein that will certainly help him to 
prosperity." Samuel Brill. 

A Masterful Work 

"A masterful work and is filled from cover to 
cover with practical, usable information for young 
men and women. I consider this book one of the 
best things you have done, and that is saying a 
great deal when the excellence of your previous 
works is taken into consideration " 

Hudson Maxim. 

A Powerful Factor 

"In our opinion, if 'selling' would be given 
more thought by such world famous writers as 
you, it would be a powerful factor in the complete 
revolution of business, and eliminate to a great 
extent the waste of time, money and human life 
that is so recklessly thrown away under the pres- 
ent ignorance of true salesmanship." 

N. A. Car king, 
Sales Mgr., Ford Motor Company. 



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keeping Jftt 

By ORISON SWETT MARDEN 



A Health Treatise 

"What to eat, howr food affects character, culi- 
nary crimes, and eating for efficiency — in short, 
what to do. to maintain perfect health — are all 
discussed in a practical and sensible way." 

Omaha Bee. 

A Timely Warning 

"Any live business man, who has been a good 
liver, should read 'Keeping Fit,' and heed its 
warnings." Samuel Brill. 

Of the Highest Value 

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many practical suggestions of great value. It is 
a welcome addition to Dr. Marden's books, all 
of which I regard as of the highest value in their 
effect upon the development of the individual." 
John L. Bates, 
(Ex-Governor of Massachusetts). 

Advice that is Needed 

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tained in this book; they would enjoy better 
health and live longer if they read and heeded its 
admonitions." Evening Post (New York). 

A Friendly Tip 

"If a lot of people were to read 'Keeping Fit' 
there would be less running to physicians." 

Boston Globe. 

Good Suggestions 

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it." San Francisco Chronicle. 



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By ORISON SWETT MARDEN 
Culture o£ the Finer Self 

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assertion." Christian World. 

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who could not profit by reading this book." 

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realities of life." Hartford Post. 

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to the timid, the discouraged, and the weary." 

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OPINIONS OF 



Like the previous works of Dr. Marden, this 
book is one destined to be of much value in 
inspiring our young people to higher and better 
efforts. His previous works have done a vast 
amount of good, and I am certain that every 
young woman who reads the new work will find 
in it much of helpfulness. 

Ex-Governor of Massachusetts John L. Bates. 

It is just the thing we need, and I am glad that 
you have been the one to write it. You know 
how I appreciate your books and the great value 
I set upon them. 

Positively I do not know of the writings of any 
other man in America that I would rather have 
in the hands of the young men of this nation. 

Judge Benj. B. Lindsey, Juvenile Court, 
Denver, Colorado. 

Dr. Marden is not a fanatic, but a safe, sane 
and practical writer of everyday problems. He 
presents this subject in a broad, simple way that 
carries conviction to his readers. It is not an 
appeal to either the married or the unmarried, the 
suffragist or the anti-suffragist, but to all humanity. 
Of course men and women will discuss the book 
from their point of view, for all will not agree 
with him, but all will agree that it is an interest- 
ing book and worth reading. 

The Constitution (.Atlanta, Ga.) 

The best thing the author has done. 

Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer. 



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